Zombie Cat Science
by Zombie Cat Scientist
Summary: Science loving suicidal insert falls into the Naruto world. What happens when an insert dies for a second time? What if you couldn't die permanently, no matter how hard you tried? What if the only other 'scientist' around is a sadistic snake loving ninja named Orochimaru and you catch his notice? M for repeated suicide. Psychological fic. Genderqueer semi-insert OC.
1. Curiosity killed the cat, it came back

**Zombie Cat Science**

**Alt titles: Zombie Chakra Science or Black Cat Science.**

**Summary:** What would you do if your power is dying repeatedly? What if you weren't the only one from another world, and others with different goals caused mayhem? What if you weren't the loyalty above freedom type? What if the only one you met like you was an insane monster named Orochimaru? Science loving suicidal insert comes to the Naruto-verse. Humanistic philosophy at the very end.

An interesting idea I haven't seen anyone test yet, which is what happens when an insert dies a second time? Slightly self!inserty in that we both suffered neglect and like science; Neko the insert will also be much like a certain canon character, at least in trauma and grumpiness, and reflects a different way that character could have gone, points if you can guess which before a certain chapter: Black Cat Luck.

They do not know the Naruto-verse is a manga. They come to identify as a genderless asexual (body shenanigans affect that too, well, you'll see how), and if genderqueer and QUILTBAG/LGBT bothers you, stop being such a shitty bigot and keep reading. And for the love of Loki and science and puppies, please don't tell much you are 'glad there is no gay stuff cuz they are ace'. It's phobic, and it makes me want to add gay scenes just to piss you off. You make Neko want to commit suicide again.

**Trigger warnings** (For story as a whole) for suicide, failed suicide attempts, fearlessness and wishfulness towards death, abuse, fondness and even love for abusive authority figures, broken violent friendships, threat of rape toward a male character for bloodline limit (and implied to have been done to females for the same reason), and depressed suicidal thoughts.

No lemons/sex, though there may be references.

**On fan-fanfics and fan sequels:** If there is an element of my work you want to nick, go ahead but drop a credit, okay? I don't mind the fourth wall weirdness of having an insert in another fic remember reading my fanfic or something like that, or someone having a fic with the same premise as this.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto, or Orochimaru, Sakura, etc. I do own Neko, but not Sasuke. No money is made off of this, and it bares little resemblance to the Naruto story besides the basic world and a few mentioned events; it is created purely for discussion and educational purposes, and used to critique certain ideas.

.

.

1 **Curiosity killed the Cat, Satisfaction Brought It Back**

So... can't say I expected that result of my experiment. Most interesting, most interesting indeed.

What if you reincarnated?

Why, you'd test it by killing yourself again, of course.

Or at least, that's what I planned before things got derailed. To be honest, I didn't really need another excuse to kill myself; as one might guess, in my old life I was not a happy person. I kicked my own bucket before anything else could do it for me. I was not a religious person, but even if I was, the thought of being judged by Anubis and having my heart devoured by a crocodile headed god didn't scare me. I'm more afraid of being maimed than I am of pain, and if you're dead you are pretty much as maimed as you are going to get, I figure. Also, I was already in hideous pain; how exactly was the thought of being in pain again going to deter me? Best case scenario (or so I thought) I would feel no more pain, worst case I'd continue to feel pain. If I got trapped in some sort of limbo with other people, perhaps I could even cheer them up and work to improve their life, or afterlife.

I was a pretty altruistic person, and it had been extreme isolation that had ended up helping me kill me.

You see, I had been locked in my parent's attic like some kind of modern day Rapunzel, unable to go to school or have any opportunities to interact with other people outside the family. I even wasn't allowed to cut my hair without permission, just like Rapunzel. When I was old enough to understand this situation was fucked up, I was told I was too old to call Child Services. No one wants to adopt an adult, anyway, and I was constantly told how I could end up with so much worse for a parent, that the foster system was pretty screwed up and often led to more abuse. I was left with a bizarre love and hate at the same time for my family; they were all I had, they insisted they loved me, and yet... they neglected me so...

Eventually I couldn't take it anymore, you know? I didn't even feel sad, or all that angry, just sort of resigned and bored. Not what you normally imagine a suicidal person to be like, right? Or at least, that's what I had often thought of suicidal people being like: very sad and obviously depressed people, or the TV breed of 'insane' even though I knew the TV was full of bullcrap when it came to mental illness. I wasn't like that at all. It simply felt like the logical thing to do, killing myself. I wanted to please my family and get away from them at the same time, and that was impossible.

I didn't want them to cry, so I went through efforts to hide my death, told them I was going traveling far away and to not worry if they didn't hear from me for a long time. They'd done everything possible to sabotage my education and prospects (or so it felt anyway), so to drive off suspicion about how I got the money I just told them I was going to be a hobo.

They were less than pleased by that plan, but, hey, I didn't exactly stick around to hear their criticisms. It was really nice to have silence, as it seemed like every day I had to listen to them blather.

I profess, when the moment came to kill myself, I cried like a damn baby.

That was quite fitting, as next thing I knew... I was a baby.

My lucidity towards this bizarre fact thankfully did not last long, coming and going for brief moments as I grew, my world a baby's synesthesiac world of tasting blue and feeling sweet and sour and seeing melodies in colors. Yes, that's how very young babies view the world, with senses intermingled. It was even more different than that, as my mind was still learning to interpret vertical and horizontal, background and foreground and making three dimensional images from the information coming from both eyes; sometimes everything looked totally flat like a cartoon! It was a very strange experience, and as you can imagine when your head is that alien, not the most productive to thinking adult-like thoughts.

My limbs wobbled about randomly and with little control from me, sometimes making entirely instinctive movements; the suckle response, grip, and the pick me up responses are hardwired in infants, just like the swimming response if you put them in water.

All that was fine, as babies sleep most of the time anyway and can't do much. Now, you may have read stories about adult minds in child brains. That's..._ not quite_ how it works, or not how it should work in a world where brains hold minds rather than dualistic mumbo jumbo soul nonsense. If you have a child's brain, you have a child's mind, automatically. That doesn't make you stupid, mind, children are quite intelligent. The biggest advantage adults have is better development, emotional maturity and experience, and some prodigies may be more intelligent than adults many years their seniors.

You might wonder how I know this, when I lack any examples of adult memories being implanted into children. Well, I don't know it _exactly_, but science allows one to make predictions based upon facts. Assuming a **non** mind-body dualistic world, the mind and the brain are essentially the same. We may assume with confidence, therefore, that in a case of 'reincarnation' either the brain is entirely a child's, simply with a cloned personality (like a twin) and memories already imprinted into the brain tissue, or the brain has been modified to be more like an adult's, in which case it _isn't_ a child's brain anymore, and the body is not fully a child's; anyone doing an examination of the brain who knew what they were doing would be quite perturbed. The latter situation is a bit like a transgender person, actually, which would make them, what, a trans-adult?

Admittedly, reincarnation brings up the strong likely-hood that there is a kind of soul mumbo jumbo duality, in which case known science goes out the toilet, but since there are brains in this world and they effect the mind and directly mirror changes in it, that duality if existent does not seem to be very strong.

I had been a prodigy myself of sorts in the old world, skipping grades and teaching myself many things. My parents certainly had not taught me much beyond basic math and reading. I had to teach myself writing, advanced math, spelling and history, and my own siblings to the day of my death couldn't spell too well. I'd enjoyed learning science, logic, programming... couldn't claim to have the most well rounded education, but, hey, I'd tried my best.

I had been a lucid dreamer, capable of knowing when I was dreaming or not, and I apparently started walking and talking on the early side. This served me well now, helping me to come into full awareness. It was an awful lot like dreaming and becoming lucid actually, and made me, if not for the incredible detail of the world and the fact I could feel pain and heat properly, almost wonder if I was dreaming. It didn't help that very young children tend to not form long-term memories, so I was actually quite a bit along, sitting upright even, before I fully 'woke', reviewed my situation, and actually sharply remembered my previous recent bouts of lucidity or near lucidity and deduced I'd been having them since rebirth.

In a lucid dream, it's not uncommon to become lucid for awhile, then forget you are dreaming, then become lucid again but not remember you were lucid before. On awakening, you remember both bouts of lucidity. My full 'awaking' was like that, as I remembered previous lucid bouts but had not been fully aware and rational. Probably my child mind couldn't handle it.

I discovered I was a girl child, in what seemed to be old fashioned times if the formal clothes were enough to go by, and decided, nope, not doing this bullshit. You could not pay me enough to be a woman raised to be nothing but a babymaker. And I wanted to kill myself again in any case. In science, you have to replicate results in order to test theories anyway, and this could just be the mental delusions of a deranged child. I needed to test and make sure, get more data for a pattern formation; would I reincarnate in different worlds each time, for instance?

But first, I decided to learn the language. And music. The world as a baby is actually quite fascinating; you have perfect pitch, and you hear languages in a way you don't as an adult. It's very difficult to describe, except as a sort of sensory overload where you can't tune every little detail out very easily. It was a foreign language the adults were speaking, and it was fascinating to learn a whole new language all over again, as well as figure out how to 'talk' to adults with eyes and smiles and coos to get what you wanted. It was a bit humiliating, sure, but honestly I'd had worse experiences.

The life itself was quite boring. It was a simple little family, making shoes and clothes to sell in a... sweatshop? A place with a bunch of people making clothes together with nothing more than sewing machines. Made me kind of sad, actually. It looked like mass manufacturing with robots hadn't been invented yet, or maybe this was some third world country where nobody gave a damn about the workers and used human labor because it was cheaper than building machines when you didn't have to pay the workers fair wages above a few cents an hour.

Some of the clothes were quite strange looking though. Were there legions of ninja cosplayers around here? Seriously. Of course, the actual most logical conclusion were that there were actual shinobi running around, which considering the language was not unexpected. I'd thought in real life though most ninja wouldn't do something so obvious as wear ninja costumes though!

It wasn't long after that that I found ninjas were real and had literal super powers here. As if my life could not get any stranger. Yet, it actually offered hope. The phenomena behind my reincarnation had to be connected to this, and it gave me something to work off of besides 'it happened somehow'.

I'm sad to say I didn't attach much to my new family when I began to walk and talk. We had little in common, and I was considered a spooky child from the beginning and ostracized by my new siblings.

I enjoyed listening to stories of ninja and was quite happy when I learned I'd be going to the same school, if only at first, since civilians and ninjas shared at the beginning (not a bad idea, actually) to scout talent. I was less happy when I realized I'd just be learning reading and writing and basic maths all over again, rather than doing any jutsu. I did need to learn to read in this new language, but, ugh... perhaps my time of death should be soon. It was clear I had little chakra talent in this body, and the best jutsu were reserved for jonin or special clans. Knowledge was hoarded here, and that was a death blow to the passion of a scientist.

Perhaps if I died again I would not have to stay in such a horrible universe!

On the day of my planned second death, shortly after I'd had my fill of mind numbing baby school for a few months, I spotted a strange looking man with a pale and snake-like face. From what I'd heard, he must be Orochimaru. He was talking to another ninja, who poofed away. He stood on a building and made no note of me.

"Hello sir. You are Orochimaru, right?"

He looked down at me with unveiled disgust. "I have no desire to indulge the whims of children. If you have lost your parents, go get lost somewhere else."

Wow, what a nice character. Still, I felt we were comrades of curiosity. "I heard you got in trouble for human experimentation. I don't think human experimentation is inherently bad, though. And I heard it was just corpses, right? They can't complain." I could tell I'd mildly surprised him with my large vocabulary, if nothing else.

"Oh? Is that so?" He flicked his tongue in a snakish manner over his lips. Another person might have found it creepy, but not me. He was obviously part snake or something, and snakes did that to smell, nothing ominous.

I was telling the truth about my annoyance. There had been nothing more annoying to me than when people butchered facts and said someone 'experimented' as code for 'they did evil'. At least have the decency to say 'experimented in an unethical manner' or, even worse of a sin, 'experimented haphazardly'. Did they even have a scientific method in this universe though? Did this Orochimaru at least use, say, controls, models and tests designed to disprove hypotheses in his experiments, or was he just doing random things to corpses and seeing what happened? Not that random things to corpses didn't potentially have value, but it was a lot better if you actually had some concept of what you were doing.

"Yes. Especially if people volunteer and are properly informed of what they are consenting to, then there would be nothing morally wrong with it at all. Although with corpses I guess you'd have to get people to agree to donate their bodies to science ahead of time." Of course, there were some experiments where an element of surprise was necessary, but you could still get consent to something vague like 'possible psychological discomfort'. Although, if it's to a corpse, they can't really care, can they? I admit I was a weirdo, but I didn't really care what happened to my corpse after I died. "There are benefits to ethical experimentation. Unnecessary pain or blood loss could skew the results. You want as few new variables introduced as possible, and pain is a variable. Did you know that if you cough as you get stabbed with a needle, you won't feel any pain? Pretty fascinating, no?"

He stared at me, tilting his head, and I wondered if perhaps I had gone a little too far. "What is your name?"

"Neko."

"You seem quite articulate, more so than some adults I know. Where did you learn this, Neko?"

"I read. But some of it is obvious." The benefits speech was something I came up with myself on the fly.

"What exactly is your point, child? Or did you just come to me to blather?" He looked rather annoyed. Oops. Guess he didn't like being reminded some considered his work unethical, or the idea some of his work might be shoddy.

I actually didn't have one, but, since he was here... "Are you still doing experiments? I might like to volunteer for one. I'd like to know the plans of it first though, I don't want to go through a flawed experiment that you'll just have to throw all the results out into the toilet for." I know most would call me a total lunatic for volunteering, but I didn't care if this resulted in pain or even death.

This caught him completely by surprise, and he looked very suspicious. "You want to volunteer?" he hissed. "Why? I don't think you would like most of my experiments. They can be... quite painful."

"I like science. And you can only think of painful experiments to do? That's not terribly imaginative, now is it?" I was pretty mouthy and fearless, but I had nothing to lose. Although I admit I was mildly worried he might be a pedophile of some sort, he struck me more as a plain old sadist. Plus most pedophiles are a little more subtle, you know? They do things like marry the mother to try and get close to the kids, pretend to 'like' kids, offer candy and car rides, and such. I had encountered one once, luckily got away unscathed. Or maybe he figured he just didn't need to bother with me, because I was obviously a lunatic like him.

"I am a ninja, pain is our trade, little girl." He laughed at me. However, miraculously he still hadn't left, so I must have caught his interest. Then he grew angry. "Did someone put you up to this? Trying to get me in trouble again?"

"What? No!" I exclaimed, horrified anyone would try to mess with scientific testing. Unless it was unethical, I suppose. Damn, I suppose experimenting on children without parental consent would count though wouldn't it? I hadn't thought this through. "Uh, I might be able to get parental consent if that's the problem. If I get them drunk enough." _Mom, Dad, can I have horrific experiments performed on myself?_

"Kukuku," he chuckled, anger disappearing again as he seemed to decide I was genuine. Which I was. "Perhaps another time, runt." He disappeared in smoke.

No science partner? Noooooo! Oh well. He probably had to go on a mission and was too busy to stand around chatting.

.

.

One day, as I walking early in the morning near where I'd met him, wondering if we'd ever meet again, hands suddenly came over my face. I bit down, only to have insubstantial smoke greet me. Again hands grabbed me, but not over the face. "Shush, it's your lucky day, volunteer."

I stopped wiggling. "Oh?" Looking up, I saw Orochimaru staring down at me.

"I've got an experiment for you."

"Then what's with the seeming kidnapping attempt?" I did not like where this was going.

"Ah ah~. You aren't going to like it." There was a gloating quality to his near sing-song voice.

"I'll be the judge of that!"

Suddenly we were moving incredibly fast, the world a blur, and I found myself underground in some strange laboratory before I could blink. Eh, he had secret labs underneath the village? Well, more like a city than a village. Town. Whichever. It was so cliché! What next, a hunchback assistant named Igor?

Well, they weren't a hunchback, but there was an assistant, a masked ninja wearing a short, black jacket with red straps on the shoulders. "Hello, Orochimaru. Another one?"

"What do you mean, another one? You got more than one volunteer?"

"Most aren't volunteers."

"Woah, hey, that's not cool. You can't just kidnaps kids without asking them if they want to be kidnapped first." I found my dreams of having a science buddy looking less and less likely.

"This one is a little deranged in the head, I see," said the masked woman, and I immediately felt annoyed. Hey, I wasn't deranged! A little mental in a depressed way, maybe, but I was quite cognizant of my situation and surroundings!

Orochimaru let go of me and held up a large needle. He smiled sadistically. "Do be a good volunteer and be still, Neko."

"Ah, time to see if my coughing trick works?" I grinned. "But I want to know what you're testing me with first."

"So nosy. Perhaps I should just kill you."

"I could care less if you do," I snapped, truly getting annoyed. "You want to tell me what's in there or not?"

"The DNA of Hashirama Senju."

"The so called God of Shinobi? So you're trying to give incredible powers to children who don't like you so they can, what, kill you easier in revenge? I am not seeing the logic of this plan, Orochimaru sir."

"Orochimaru is not stupid! We'll kill the children the moment they – I mean," the ninja seemed to realize this would cause me distress and make me struggle more. Not that they couldn't restrain me if they really wanted, but screaming could be annoying to the ears. "Kill any _disobedient_ children the moment they showed signs of wanting to use the granted powers against us." Us who? Hmm, there was some kind of secret organization here. Or a cult. No, not religious enough for a cult.

"I grow tired of your questions, little Neko. You should be more humble to the man who is going to grant your wish to be an experiment." He sounded quite impatient, and gripped my arm painfully now and prepared to push the needle into me. I winced.

"Have you attempted experimenting with animals first? I told you ethical experimentation isn't just for good feelings. It's much easier, quicker, and more cost effective to use small doses on tiny fast breeding animals like mice to perfect the technique than waste large unrefined doses on larger human subjects that are difficult to replace. With mice you could experiment on tens of thousands quite quickly."

He actually seemed to hesitate to consider this. "Mice would not be as high quality. And they do not closely resemble people, not casting jutsu or the like, except for summons." That was pretty odd. A world with many diverse (clearly evolved; there seemed to be thousands of beetle species just like my old world) animals and only human-animals* and these 'summons' cast jutsu? That didn't make sense. I'd have to learn more about these summon things.

*_Yes, I consider humans a kind of animal. Unique for being a sapient one, rather than just sentient._

"DNA is the same chemical whether in mice or humans however, so if you're inserting DNA, it's better to perfect the technique with mice first. It's simply more cost effective even if you aren't concerned with making your subjects feel nice. What's better, ten subjects or a thousand subjects?" I held out my hands and pretended they were a scale with one side getting outweighed by the other, letting one hand drop low and the other lift high.

Orochimaru let me go. "An interesting concept, child." He put his hands together, and I wondered if he was going to use a jutsu to kill me. Instead, out popped from the air several small snakes! "Your life is spared, for the moment. I wish to try this."

"Oh cool, I love snakes." I bent down to pick one up, careful to get a grip on the head in case it was bitey. I went for the most docile one, and held it gently, letting it slither in my arms like I was a tree and it was going from branch to branch. "So these are summons? Snakes should work. Although mice breed faster, being prey animals." Snakes had DNA just like everything else. And, ah, it made sense now what summons were! Summons were just animals with high amounts of chakra, like ninja were humans with high amounts of chakra.

"I have near limitless amounts of snakes to draw upon, don't worry."

"Oh, okay." I wondered if one could cancel a summon contract. I don't think I'd like being able to be summoned by a lunatic who wants to torture me! Or then again, I was weird so maybe I would if he or she presented it enticingly enough?

"What shall we do with the other children, Orochimaru?" said the other ninja, quiet. "Induct them into Root? Kill them?" _What is_ _Root? Kill them? Jerks._

"Keep them for the moment." He waved a hand in dismissal, then grabbed a snake and injected it with the needle. "I will want them for later experimentation. The human experimentation has only been delayed, if this works out. The ones already injected shall continue as planned."

Hopefully, I had just saved some of their lives and made things a lot less painful. Or had I? I wasn't stupid, I knew she only added the 'killed if disobedient' as an afterthought. They planned to dissect the children eventually, I bet. But this bought me time to potentially get them out of here. Us. If I lived that long and could locate them?

"What are you using to replicate the DNA? A virus?"

He gave me a measuring look I didn't understand. Social behavior was not my strong suit, you might have guessed. "A medical healing jutsu, corrupted to replicate the foreign DNA instead of the native DNA, somewhat akin to what a virus does. It's part of why there is such a high death rate."

"Oh. I should have guessed. I think an engineered virus might do better, although then the body's natural defenses and antibodies might fend it off."

"No, I've thought of that. Viruses only do so much, they don't usually grow new flesh or chakra natures. And medicine is not quite my strongest suit. There is another who is better," he seemed to hate admitting this, if the dark brooding look he got on his face was any indication. Could be entirely unrelated, but hey, just a guess. "Especially at the non-jutsu aspects of medicine. Chakra manipulation, however, I can master."

"There are tumorous viruses, but I take your point. It would be quite complicated to engineer them to act like the body is a fetus again and grow, I assume this is how it works, different chakra coils."

"You do not talk like a normal child," he pointed out the obvious. "I was going to just kill you, but you remind me a bit of myself."

I blinked, unsure. Wow, did I really come off that creepy? "Are you offering to let me experiment with you?"

"For as long as you prove useful to me," he said, eying me like he did not expect this arrangement to last long. I didn't expect it to, either, but, I had made progress here today. Psychopaths can't be cured, but on the off chance he was 'only' a sadistic narcissist perhaps I could poke him on to a path slightly less horrible. A path of more ethical and useful science, which, in my opinion, often produces superior results. I did not think he'd ever be a nice person. And it was not like I had anything more in my power to do.

"Well, I was planning to kill myself for fun, but I suppose I could do that for awhile."

Orochimaru looked off-put for half a second. I felt pretty pleased; I don't think many people have managed to creep him out before! I might even be the first one, and I was childish enough to revel in this idea. Although creep out might be too strong a word. Mildly uncomfortably surprise and disgruntle, but hey, that was on the scale of 'creepy', right? In any case I did not think I'd ever manage to again, so soak in it now.

"Yes. I will show you what to do. Come pick up the snakes and prod them with this needle, Neko."

"Yes... sensei."

.

.

.-.

.

**notes:**

**Fic update schedule/completion:**

This was a quick-written story, already completed, me barfing out 60,000+ words in a month with nothing better to do. :P I originally submitted it as a huuuge one-shot, but, after cautiously reading reviews (I'm a bit people-phobic, but you guys were really nice! thank you) it seems like you want me to break it up into chapters, so I'm going to quickly split it up. Maybe post one every day or two, although it was suggested I should do every week I want to make sure I actually remember to repost the fiction in entirety. For only 100 views, 5 reviews is not too bad a ratio. I might do some bonus material at some point; the ending was satisfying but there was room for a sequel and some loose ends.

_lastly.._

I make it clear now: this is not a brainless 'get stronger and beat them up' story, but a psychological and intellectual story, even if a character becomes quite strong and threatens to break everything. Events that go just like canon will only be lightly detailed or mentioned, rather than repeated in mind boring agony like a lot of fics do.

I warn you, it's a really weird story with lots of Orochimaru and a heavy theme around depression and non-psychotic bordering to psychotic mental illnesses, which means mood swings, narcissism, and paranoia. And that while I don't intend to bash, this will be filtered through the viewpoint of the OC, which I do not necessarily agree with at times but do heavily sympathize with. They may call some characters idiots, pick fights, choose lousy friends (I did say there would be Orochimaru), abandon friends, border on hypocritical to actively being so, etc. That said, there is also critique of the shinobi system and by it Konoha itself and Naruto.

There -is- a humorous arc in it (a certain fellow named Freddy), because I don't do morbid 24/7, that, since I wrote it as a free-flowing thought-to-keyboard story, ended up a bit superfluous (according to reviewers at least). It would have been more important had I decided to make the fic longer.

...fucking fanfiction net ate all my linebreaks.


	2. Catnapped

**Zombie Cat Science**

**Alt titles: Zombie Chakra Science or Black Cat Science.**

**note: Decided to split the chapters of the oneshot into actual chapters. Enjoy.**

2**Catnapped**

It was horribly wrong, but I actually had a lot of fun, even if I had only rags to sleep on, a couple of jutsu scrolls to read, and very little food to eat. They, not Orochimaru but other people here, did something strange to my tongue; without meaning to, it seems like I had entered some kind of contract to keep my mouth shut about this place to non secret organization members, or the seal would mute me? Something like that. They didn't exactly go into detail.

They tried to intimidate me, too, sending in a menacing looking ninja who I stared blankly at and yawned when he blathered about testing me and my worthiness to live, as I could care less. He seemed to get confused and mutter something about 'completely immune to killing intent'. Well, yes, I'd gotten a strange and powerful sense that he wanted to hurt me, an oppressive, murderous aura, but I didn't actually care if I died, so what was that supposed to do, make me quiver in fear? I think I managed to frighten him somehow, but I have no idea how as I thought I was being perfectly friendly when I waved him good-bye.

Speaking of contracts, I introduced Orochimaru to the concept of controls and made sure he kept some snakes unaltered so if mass numbers of snakes died, we could see if it was from the injection or from other factors. It was simple and logical, but there ended up being a big flaw in the plan.

The summons liked to go poof by themselves, especially the more intelligent ones. Some straight refused to come back. So Orochimaru had to test by periodically re-summoning and seeing which ones couldn't come back because they died. He came up with some strange technique (or maybe it was part of the contract for all I knew) for forcing summons to appear that made me frown. If some of these summons were intelligent enough to make themselves go poof and refuse to come, then they were intelligent enough to consent or not to the experiment and I felt they should be let go. Orochimaru was not one for ethics, though, and it felt like an uphill battle trying to come up with new reasons not to do something. "Ah, if they're intelligent and they don't want to cooperate, couldn't they screw up your experiment somehow?"

"I would make them regret it."

"Some of these snakes look exactly the same, and they can have a different snake summoned in their place. You might be getting the wrong snakes and never know it!" I pointed out. "You should use the stupider ones. They aren't intelligent enough to deliberately mess with your variables. Oh, and maybe if we use painkiller, they'll stay longer without poofing away."

Orochimaru scowled. I don't think many people would have championed for the ethics of proper snake treatment, and he hadn't been expecting it from the creepy girl child. Not that I identified as a girl, but, eh, I was stuck like this for the moment. "I can simply knock them unconscious. I don't need to go to such efforts."

There was often a ninja in the background watching us, and I usually ignored them, but I caught one silver haired fellow in the corner of my eye looking less than pleased. Did they just not like me questioning Orochimaru, or was it something else? The scowl stayed there long after I agreed with him cheerfully, "Well, unconsciousness works as a pain killer. That should do. You should still go after the less intelligent ones, or the more intelligent ones might start refusing to come. If they have enough intelligence for that."

"If the more intelligent ones refuse to come, that suits me fine. I will use the stupid ones." Hey! We came to agreement! Awesome.

–

It all paid off when the snakes died en mass. Sort of. "See? Now you can refine your formula and try again. If these had been children, you'd have run out of subjects by now."

"You are annoying me, Neko," he said in a rather emotionless tone, appearing beside me without warning and slashing a kunai against my arm. I yelped. Totally uncalled for! Abusive jerk. But I obeyed the unspoken message and became silent for the moment, glaring at him. Then, just as suddenly as his aggression came, it stopped and he pulled away. "Come, Neko."

I walked behind him obediently, trying to memorize the halls. It was a twisting maze underneath Konoha, and of the many chambers I was really only familiar with the main laboratory and my 'room' of sorts. We came to a new area, and there was another child there, with sunken cheeks, brown but slightly bloodshot eyes, and dirty blonde hair. They were underfed and their pale skin hadn't seen the sun in awhile, not that I was one to talk.

"It would please me if you fought, Neko."

"Oh? What kind of experiment is this?"

"Simply a test, Neko. You remember the jutsus I've performed?"

"Yes. If you're asking me to perform them, I've never done a technique before." I could feel my chakra, though, however little it was. It was easy to, what with how foreign it felt to me.

"It might help you to try," he practically purred. "Except the summons, you can't do those without a contract."

If a baby's world was one of synesthesia, then chakra was like something that had been shoe-horned clumsily into the senses, manifesting in early days as part of that synesthesia with echoes and melodies and feelings and colors, and eventually dulling down as one grew older until, if one was unlucky, it vanished from one's senses altogether. Since I'd been pretty cognizant of the world as a baby, like my perfect musical pitch I hadn't allowed it to disappear. It was now just a feeling or a color to me, sometimes both, and I had some sense of other people as well though as I didn't know how to train myself in it I worried I was going to lose the ability. Orochimaru was a bright beacon, a slithering feeling of great pressure. I could tell he had quite a bit of chakra in him. Sometimes I felt other ninjas with great power, or they were in the same room with us and the experiments; I was especially wary of them.

My opponent had a bit as well, more than I did. I faced him uneasily, attempting to adopt a balanced stance that gave a small range of myself to hit, presenting my shoulder rather than holding my chest forward.

He ran at me, and I just tried to dodge, not entirely successfully, taking in what they were doing. The hits hurt, dammit, and in retaliation I swung my leg low and tried to trip them. I was only half successful, the boy having quite good balance and managing with only one leg to stay upright, so I pushed against him. He toppled over, but rolled us both and now I was in danger of becoming underneath where it would be all over for me.

I scrambled up, especially when I saw him pull out a kunai and try to stab me. What the hell! Hearing footsteps, I saw Orochimaru wasn't even going to stay and watch. Again, what a jerk. "Are you trying to kill me?"

"Yes," answered the kid, who wasn't who I was directing that toward, but close enough.

Oh gods, by Thor and Loki and She-Hulk what a disturbed kid. I immediately felt sympathy. "Why? To please someone? You don't have to."

"I do. I am ordered to." They attempted to knife me again. I grabbed and pulled it down, trying to yank it out of their hand, and failing that threw myself on top of their arm to pin the kunai to the ground. They swiveled and scratched me with what little freedom of the wrist they had, but I didn't care. (By they, by the way, I meant 'he'. I tend to lapse into thinking of people gender-neutrally, especially if I don't know their preferred gender pronoun.)

"Why do you do as ordered?"

"Because I must." Very minimal on the information here. I could tell they would be a joy to argue with. He seemed to use chakra, because suddenly we both bounced off the ground and he flung me off him. I twisted around and faced him warily.

"Why?"

"Because I am a tool."

"Why?"

"Because I was chosen to be a tool of Root."

"Root is the organization here then? Fascinating." I liked having info confirmed.

The footsteps had stopped, not far ahead of the doorway. Orochimaru stated quietly, "Such a fool. Don't give information away to the enemy. Kill him, Neko."

"No!" I exclaimed, far more annoyed than he was. "I do not see the point of this experiment, Orochimaru, and I don't think this one has consented to die," I argue.

"I c-consent, if I fail this fight," came the little boy's voice in front of me. Then he lunged at me with the kunai, taking advantage of my bewilderment to land a blow.

What in the world? Who... someone even more suicidal than me? Is it possible? "Coerced consent doesn't count," I argued. "No one asked you if you wanted to leave or gave you another option, did they? How about instead of fighting to the death, we be friends instead? If the purpose is to get stronger, killing a sparring partner won't help, for then you won't be able to spar against them again."

"Friends?" the boy said, like the word was totally foreign on his mouth. He stopped attacking, however. I flicked my gaze to the doorway, where Orochimaru had decided to lurk.

"You know, people who like one another."

"Child, do not blather such nonsense. I know you to be more intelligent than that," Orochimaru said, anger beginning to creep into his voice. "I will kill the boy myself if I must."

Well, that was one of the most stupid things I'd ever heard him say, and the irony was he was the one accusing _me_ of nonsense. "You still have not explained why he must die, Sensei. But if I have inferred correctly, you believe no one actually likes one another? Or you believe liking does not exist? I admit qualia are impossible to fully test, being entirely in other people's heads, but that's exactly why you shouldn't jump to conclusions what it feels like to be someone else, Orochimaru. People frequently make the mistake of assuming everyone is exactly like them. But even you must like something, right? Favorite food, maybe? Why else would you want to live?"

"You call me sensei, yet you constantly lecture as if _you_ are the one teaching _me_," he hissed. "I tolerate your insolence far too much, pest."

"You don't have an answer?" I goaded at his pride.

"Liking is a weakness. It will not help you attain true power, and it allows other people to manipulate and use you. And when people die or reject you, it only causes you grief and pain," for a moment he actually sounded pained, and I wondered who he had lost. Family? And with that face of his, I could easily see him being rejected by many people before they even got to know him.

Had the poor sucker been born like that? Did he justify the harm he did to others because of 'wrongs' done to him? Were half of my sentences questions? The manipulate comment sounded like projecting, though; he'd clearly manipulated a few in his time. And power... hmm... power to do what?

I carefully responded, "Weakness implies a goal or a purpose, an objective standard to measure against. Water makes a weak barrier, for instance, but a powerful antidote to thirst. Yet, water has no inherent purpose and can be used for either, such as in moats. What you use something for is a _preference_. Not an innate and objective standard. _Liking_ is a preference." I said, trying to avoid sounding like I was attacking him verbally despite my exasperation over his missing something so obvious to me, knowing what was obvious to me often was not to others. I know logic is not the strong suit of most people, but it isn't _that_ hard, is it? This man was supposed to be a legend. "So I guess the question is, power to do what? What standard to measure by?"

"Immortality. When you have true power, you can indulge any silly whims you desire." Okay, not a bad point. Although that was a rather difficult set of aims to accomplish, wasn't it?

"Okay, that's your preference." I was going to add 'other people are not required to share it' but suspected that meant 'other people are fodder' in his vocabulary. "What are you going to do with immortality when you have it?"

"My goal in life is to learn all jutsu and deduce the hidden principles behind them. For this, I will need a great deal of time, and I am already in my prime." (1)

"Sounds fun. Forever is a long time though, wouldn't you run out of jutsu to learn eventually?" Well, people would probably make more, but after enough time, it would all be re-runs and re-makes, like endless sequels in a movie theater. A different person might have said 'that sounds pointless, just learn one super powerful jutsu that can do anything' or the like, but, I chanced that Orochimaru was like me. He understood the innate joy of simply learning something new, of finding something different in the world. To us, I suspected, learning all the jutsu was a joy in and of itself, not just a means to an end. And for that, the threat of no more jutsu to learn would be more devastating and thought provoking to him than an obnoxious attack at his intellect for not having the smarts to see how 'superior' one single jutsu would be. Something few people understood was that arguments are not necessarily about winning, but achieving your goal of nudging the other side closer to your side; otherwise, it's just ego stroking and proclaiming loudly how right you are. "And what will you do with all that power, all that knowledge? If unused, wouldn't it be the same as not having it at all? I suppose you could kill your enemies, but what about after that? How will you shape the world? And then what will you do after that?" He was not as bad tempered as I'd feared he'd be; he hadn't killed me yet, after all. I tried to say all this in as nonthreatening and neutral a tone as possible, inquisitive and nonjudgmental.

The snake-like ninja looked truly lost for a moment, though the expression was subtle, his eyes searching rapidly for something unseen to me. Perhaps he had never thought that far ahead, never confronted it. His vision seemed that of a child afraid of eternal slumber, of ambition but no clear end game in life, a person quite unlikely to make such a confrontation to endings.

I hoped I had caught him in a verbal trap. He could not very well say 'make a better world', not without defining what a better world would be like. If making people stronger was it, and people couldn't get stronger without stepping on others like he believed, then he'd be threatening his own position by strengthening others. If by making a better world he helped people with their likes and dreams, then he'd be admitting attachments were not useless. Provided he thought it out logically.

"I will set the world in motion. A pinwheel that does not move is no fun to watch. Perhaps I will destroy it after is of no more use to me," he mused. Well, crap, that backfired. Now he wanted to destroy the world like a cartoon villain. Although I had managed to get him thoughtful for awhile, at least that was something? "Though I think being God to this world should be quite entertaining." And a god complex. Joy.

"Or you could create new things, so there would be more to learn." I tried to fix the situation, although really the situation was always broken. He would have come to this idea eventually without any of my 'help'. "And if you were really powerful, you could try something new, like loving someone who poses no threat to you."

"Ridiculous," he scoffed. Yeah, okay, that last line was pretty damn corny. "Why would I love someone pathetic?"

"I can't speak for your personal preferences. But for me, a friend is someone who together you do enjoyable activities with. Who you enjoy speaking to. Most humans have an instinctive need for company, though some antisocial ones don't. It makes life enjoyable to them so they wish to keep on living. Without anything to like or aim for as a goal, you'd grow bored of living fast." Then, going against the usual kinds of friendship speeches, I added: "You don't have to trust your friends. You don't have to aid them, though that's a pretty terrible friendship. In a good friendship, you help each other, but at its most basic, you just do things you like together. I enjoy talking to you, so I'd like to consider you a friend, Sensei." For the moment, I was glad ninja children matured ridiculously quickly, or this would seem extremely suspicious at best that a child who probably hadn't even lived long enough to have experienced broken friendships was making reference to terrible ones. As it was, he looked uneasy.

"If you truly want to be friendly to me... It would please me if you killed the child," Orochimaru said with a growing smirk.

"A blatant emotional manipulation to get what you want? I said friend, not lackey." However, this turn in conversation seemed enough to make the other child give up glancing silently between us to take another lunge at me. This time, I let them knock me down. "I grow bored of this. Go ahead and stab me." Complying, they stabbed straight in the gut. Fuck that hurt! "Ouch! Alright, you got me, I'm dying, satisfied?"

The blonde brainwashed child stood up and bowed. "That seems satisfactory. You will not survive that wound. Goodbye." They turned and walked off and I watched them go, panting in pain as I did.

I looked toward Orochimaru, pained, but thankfully I'd always had a high pain tolerance so I could still blather on with endless questions like he hated so much. "Did you get the result you wanted, then?"

"No." He sounded and looked quite agitated, his toy bleeding on the floor. Translation: _I wanted you to try to kill him, and either fail at that so I could call you weak and dismiss your annoying words as unimportant, or succeed and prove yourself just like me. Not let yourself get stabbed and then have the audacity to smile at me like nothing happened! _He struck me as the sort afraid of death, so perhaps my lack of fear miffed him a bit. Then his expression smoothed. "Most interesting."

"I thought of a route we could go to study immortality," I yawned. "But I guess I'll bleed out on the floor now." I laid myself back to keep from getting light headed and dizzy, and tried to staunch the blood flow a bit with my shirt and hands. After a moment of amused but pained thought, I attempted the Ox and Tiger seals, trying to do the healing palm technique. It was far above my current level of absolute novice, so I was not surprised when I didn't get anything more than a fizzle. I tried to manipulate Yin chakra for the required release, knowing I needed special chakra for the technique, but had trouble figuring out how to differentiate it from normal chakra. Did it feel different maybe? The jutsu should be easier to do on yourself, since you didn't have to worry about foreign chakra problems, but I still had difficulties. Now was maybe not the best conditions for doing your first technique in any case. Although Orochimaru seemed to hope earlier I'd be some sort of prodigy who'd pick things up with very little instruction.

...he might be right, but not without practice!

"You little fool, you aren't using the right chakra release." I heard him say, and turned my head to glare at him for stating the obvious but instead gave a look of surprise when I saw him walking toward me and crouching down. Had he ever crouched down near me before, even to look me in the eye? No; it had been beneath him. "Yin is spiritual energy, mental and imaginative. Yang is physical. Medical techniques demand you don't use both, but one or the other. Try to guess which is used for this technique.(2)"

Hmm. Perhaps it felt more physical or mental, and if I concentrated on that I could summon it? I tried for mental Yin, and was rewarded with a slight glow. The minute amount of chakra in my body meant it didn't last very long though, although it did make it easier to control; I had only placed it down against my wound for half a second before it winked out. I was left feeling exhausted, although that might just be the blood loss speaking.

To my surprise, he hovered his hands just above me, a glow blooming around them. I immediately felt better and breathed easier, although I was not sure why he was doing this. I knew it was not affection. Curiosity? If we were at all alike, he wouldn't be able to resist for that alone. And if it was fear of death motivating him through life, then my comment about studying immortality would draw him too.

To be honest, I wanted to figure it out too. Because if I was immortal, I wanted to figure out how it had happened.

If that was not enough shock for one day, he picked me up and carried me away. I took the opportunity for revenge by hugging him and getting blood on his clothes. Alright, that was not my_ first _motivation for burying my face against him. I was still a relatively normal human, and craved basic human contact once in awhile. I hadn't had any in ages. He stiffened uncomfortably at the contact, but I was merciless about it and paid no attention.

He came to a new room I hadn't been before and put me down on an actual bed. "Rest," he commanded, like I was incapable of figuring that out on my own.

I closed my eyes too trustingly.

.

* * *

-1– A near straight quotation from the manga. This is a fairly fascinating example of a character getting diluted over many adaptations and fanon taking over canon, as I've seen fanfic that clearly adapted from other fanfic where this was brought down to the line 'my goal is to learn every jutsu', missing the important part where he says he wants to learn its hidden inner principles. Although the anime might be at fault, since the dub changes lines, sometimes for the better, as Kakashi is a lot less verbally aggressive in the anime. 'I hate you' versus 'you are idiots'.

His desire for knowledge will be a very important theme for this fiction.

-2- I'm not an obsessive reader, in fact I never finished, but fairly sure this is canon.

.

* * *

.


	3. Polyticks

**Zombie Cat Science**

**Alt titles: Zombie Chakra Science or Black Cat Science.**

.

3**Poly-ticks**

"I talked to the Hokage about human experimentation."

"And?" I woke excitedly, sitting upright on 'my' bed in my tiny room, or really more like prison. It had been several days, and I felt completely better now. He didn't visit every morning, but I looked forward to it when he did. I told myself it was stupid, because he was a manipulative, jerkish son of a gun, but, he was also the only other person around who knew at heart what it was like to yearn to know_ everything, _and to have that fact about you demonized. To, say, learn every jutsu for the sake of it. Another person might say, 'what is the point of learning every jutsu? What you need is to learn one super technique that can do anything, or learn the fundamental nature of chakra and just not need jutsu at all blah blah blah', but that would be indeed missing the fact there didn't need to be any point, beyond sheer enjoyment! Some activities could be enjoyed in and of themselves, otherwise, you'd have an endless illogical circle where everything had to be justified by something else.

Although, he did say he was interested in the principles behind chakra and jutsu. Learning every single one might not be the most efficient way to go about it, better to do experiments on chakra itself and see what composes a jutsu. Although if it was like chemistry, it wouldn't hurt and with every new jutsu something new could potentially be discovered!

"He said no. That he might have thought about it if not for the scandal of the corpses incident," Orochimaru said with distaste. He slouched a little, like he was sulking. Was he? Yeah, I think he was, just too proud to admit it.

"Damn, I hate politics. I suppose the chances of you finding support elsewhere to help change his mind are slim?" My morality was probably a little skewed, considering I was not bothered at all by the fact he'd been messing around with corpses, but, hey, it was not like my current company cared. Although that was probably a sign I should care.

"Very. I have a little support, but overall I am not popular, despite everything I have done for the village." Oooh, how very bitter sounding. Could I dig up a story behind there?

"That little support mostly comes from Root and its leadership?"

He narrowed his eyes at me. "You are too clever sometimes, little Neko."

Time to change subject. I stretched. "Are you alright? Not even snakes actually have cold blood. Your hands were kind of cold earlier."

"Your concerns are misplaced. I am fine." He seemed disgruntled, not an unusual state. I seemed to annoy him easily.

"Well, alright, onward to more science! I was thinking the best route for any study of immortality would be to look into souls, reincarnation, that sort of thing. How much have you?"

"Somewhat. My first route was to look into snakes and other animals with rejuvenation abilities. I admire their ability to regrow an entirely new skin and shed off the impurities of the old one."

"Most animals grow new skin, they just do it gradually," I told him. He gave me a glance that told me no one my age should know so much, but I didn't care really. Or maybe it was a 'does this have a point?' glance. Glances aren't actually that great at communicating advanced concepts, and it was not unlikely I was prone to interpreting them in an ego stroking way. "Salamanders actually grow new limbs when cut, and I believe there are breeds that stay in a state of permanent neotony, which under the right conditions can be triggered to change to the 'adult' form of related non-neotoneous species, though their babyish form was perfectly capable of reproducing before." I could have sworn there was a species of worm or hydra that was effectively immortal, but I couldn't remember it. "Death is related to the fact our human cells only replicate a certain number of times to cut down on cancer, and that our growth development genes don't ever truly turn off even in adulthood when we don't need them anymore, leading to errors and mistakes."

"And where did you learn this?"

"I read a lot." I shrugged at him.

"If your chakra and abilities were not so incredibly pathetic, I'd suspect you of being a ninja spy."

"Well, that's just sloppy. I thought you suspected everyone, including the mailman, to be a ninja spy," I teased him. Then I wondered if there were mail men or if I had just confused him.

He was not in the mood to be teased, pressing a kunai to my throat. I just sighed and patiently waited for him to grow bored of that.. The pale snake sannin did, eventually. After, he acted like nothing had happened. There was that weird pressure of murderousness suffused in the chakra again. "I have studied the scroll of the second Hokage, Impure World Reincarnation. It wouldn't work well for gaining immortality, as it requires someone else to cast the jutsu, and it requires a living vessel which the caster can control after the subject reincarnates into it."

Hmm. "Well, perhaps it could be modified. A time or event triggered seal for a jutsu could deal with the first problem, preferably with the event being death." Why am I helping him gain immortality? Well, it looked like he was perfectly capable of finding methods on his own, so, might as well have fun and see if any information might be useful to me. Apparently souls were indeed a thing, that was already useful information I hadn't known for certain before. "For the second, maybe it could be downgraded to a simpler non-sapient living thing than what I'm assuming are people. With all the transformation jutsus and the like, it doesn't seem like it would be hard to change a snake to function like a man. You could do all the preparations you wanted on it and it wouldn't put up much fuss if you treated it well, not understanding death. A human subject on the other hand might try to remove any seal you put on it or kill themselves out of spite to end your existence."

He looked less than thrilled at the idea of using a mouse or snake to reincarnate into, but thoughtful when I spoke of event triggered jutsu. Me personally, I didn't know why event triggered jutsu were not the biggest thing ever. They had time-set bombs, didn't they? Why not make other things?

"I have another, similar technique I have been working on that gets around some of those problems. Living Corpse Reincarnation. I am still working on it, but it will allow me to steal another body, overpower the host soul, and use the body for my own soul."

I didn't like the sound of that much. "So that is what the mysterious corpses showing up were about?" If he'd been practicing any of these techniques requiring sacrifices, seems like it wasn't just corpses (who could have just died of natural causes), but people_ he murdered to make into_ corpses! Bastard.

"Ah, no. I was having students dissect them to study their anatomy, and occasionally dissecting them myself. Much better than just studying anatomy out of a book," he chuckled. "Especially for body parts you won't find written down."

That made me feel marginally better. So he hadn't started butchering people _yet. _Emphasis on yet. He planned to.

"As well, some of my test subjects perished." Okay, never mind the yet. He'd helped kill people.

"So, the DNA you wanted to inject into me, did that have something to do with immortality too, or just power?"

"Little escapes you, I see. You spoke of salamanders regrowing limbs. That ninja had incredible healing abilities himself, almost immune to wounds and damage."

"Not a bad way to go, I admit. But if I were going for immortality, I'd go for the ultimate fail safe." Here was my opening. "An aware soul that doesn't even need a body and can reincarnate by itself. If souls normally reincarnate into new lives," I glanced at him to see if this was correct or not. His emotionless expression was entirely unhelpful, so I continued, "then all you would need is the awareness after death and the ability to stay so aware after coming to a new body."

"No, I don't think natural reincarnation is common. Otherwise, Impure World Reincarnation would usually fail or never work without a soul to latch on to."

"Oh," I sighed. Well, that was one theory down the toilet. Or maybe not, I found myself doubting whether he had truly tested Impure World Reincarnation enough to see what the success rate was. Maybe only civilian souls reincarnated naturally for instance; he was unlikely to have tested that or other counter hypothesis to try and disprove his hypothesis. "So... you want to become immortal, and you don't want to attach to anyone else because they'll just cause you grief when they die or get hurt?"

"Correct, Neko. I suggest you remember that attachments are a waste of energy." So he can feel grief. That meant he wasn't a psychopath, just a maniacal narcissist. Didn't make him any safer to be around, but, true psychopaths were incapable of attachments. Of course I, with my total lack of true attachment to anyone, was completely one to talk here.

Now, what looked like grief could just be getting upset that something they were using (parents) got taken away from them, but in this case he would not have cared to deliberately avoid attachment, as he wouldn't have understood what it felt like. Psychopaths had problems with emotional processing in the limbic system of the brain, learning from past mistakes and punishments, problems looking to the future (grandiose visions but lack of other long term plans), and with impulse control, as well as sometimes a Jekyl and Hyde affect caused by the two hemispheres of their brain not communicating correctly. He seemed a little too intelligent to be someone with an orbitofrontal cognition problem, and he seemed to understand abstract emotional concepts without entirely engaging in parroting. He didn't seem to 'Jekyl' along with 'Hyde', or descend into nonsensical gibberish as some psychopaths like Putin did ('Should they get a dog?' 'blah blah blah elephants, wifely submission, you could get an animal coat'), not that I'd seen the way he acted enough to tell that for certain yet, so, not a two sides of the brain communication problem. He was able to hold a job for a long period, but ninja work was exactly the sort of job that would appeal to a psychopath so that really didn't count. He did seem emotionally stunted and to have difficulties comprehending people with different emotions from him, so, perhaps there was some damage to his limbic system, particularly the hippocampus. One out of three damage zones wasn't good, but, emotional stunting could be caused by neglect rather than brain mis-development, or neglect could cause lack of development; if you don't use something in the brain, you can lose it.

"For introverts. For most extroverts, attachments make them more energetic." I corrected. I understood he was not a happy party and large crowds person. I was introverted myself, but despite the drain of energy other people presented I still had the urge to seek them out from time to time. Actually, it was quite unusual of me to talk this much, but then I usually had no incentive to speak either. "Theoretically then, you could attach to someone if they were immortal then?" I enjoyed messing with him far too much.

"I have no desire to. Do not think I plan to share my techniques. " He gave me a hideous glare that made it clear the conversation was over before disappearing in a blur. Immediately in danger of boredom, I frowned, looked around, and went to my small bookshelf of scrolls to read by a lamp light.

Surely he realized that if he gave me details on how to do related jutsu and snippets of how he planned to do the jutsu, I could probably figure out his methods for myself? Ah well. Maybe he just planned to kill me when I looked in danger of being able to become immortal.

I trained, and the weirdest thing was, I actually stopped planning to kill myself. By all rights this situation, being trapped in some kind of weird underground labyrinth and being occasionally forced into weird experiments, should have depressed me worse. In reality I was actually beginning to be cheerful. That's right, my previous life had been so incredibly dull, suicidally depressed and lonely that being kidnapped by a creep who probably wanted to kill me someday was an improvement!

Left alone for awhile, it didn't take me long to grow bored of reading (I read pretty fast), learn the typical schedule that my captors came and went, and decide to escape for some exploration in between sessions. A locked door was not much trouble to me, as I applied chakra to manipulate the lock with success after some trial and error. I carefully kept track of my paths and listened for danger, and eventually after who knows how many days of exploring, going back to my room, meeting my captors, leaving for exploring, going back to my room, exploring, came to a new laboratory area.

Children floated in tanks, like a bad TV show trying to depict a science experiment. Looking around trying to sense if anyone was there, I decided to creep in and try to free them. I realized one of them was actually conscious, so I freed them first, after some difficulties trying to get the tank open.

Water spilled, or at least I thought it was water, all over the floor, getting my shoes soggy. The dark brown haired child stumbled. I immediately realized a flaw in my total lack of a plan. I didn't actually know how to get out of here. By all rights, I'd just fucked everything up by not escaping myself and alerting authorities, but I'd reacted on impulse when I saw that miserable face. Who could resist, honestly?

"Are you alright?" They stared at me with complete shock, like they could not believe this was really happening. "You don't have to speak, you can just nod."

Nothing. Okay,_ ugh_, fine. "Do you understand me?"

A nod, slowly. Okay, good. Then the boy spoke, "Wh-why?"

Glorious, a comrade in questions! "You looked miserable in there. Come on, follow me, I can hide you under my bed maybe." I barely had enough food for myself, but I didn't mind sharing even if it meant starving. "I'm Neko, who are you?"

"I..." his voice was raw, and he struggled to speak. "I'm having trouble remembering. Ten..? Tenzo? That sounds familiar."

"Alright, good to meet you Tenzo!" I said cheerfully, while trying to keep my voice down. I led him to my room and had him hide under the bed. "I will try to find a way out. Hopefully I will be back soon, okay?"

"Okay."

I had a hell of a time, narrowly avoiding several ninja at one point. I dared to follow after several minutes, found an exit that way, and found myself hesitating. Did I really want to leave? Where did I really have to go, anyway? I couldn't leave the kid on his own, though, could I? Ah, but, maybe I could spring him out, then return with no one the wiser.

Quickly heading back, there was no time to lose. "Okay, I think I found a way out, hurry!" Tenzo crawled out from under the bed and weakly made his way over to me. Poor kid wasn't in the best of shape, his muscles a bit atrophied from lack of use. After a moment of thought, I simply picked him up and ran off with him. Or fast walked, being that I tried to avoid panting and getting overheard by someone.

The new plan almost worked, but as we came to the exit someone jumped out from the shadows in front of us.

"You brat. You've been causing a lot of trouble -" I have? Huh? How? "and now this? Stealing experiments from Root? You'll pay for this!" It was that masked ninja woman who had been watching me on several occasions before. Clearly, she worked for Root first and not for Orochimaru. I wonder how he felt being a subordinate? Unless he was actually the leader. That might be possible.

"No! I won't die like the others! I won't go back!" Tenzo shouted, and to my shock roots suddenly sprang out from his hand and attacked the enemy nin. What the hell? Oh, right, he was an experiment with powerful ninja DNA, this must be his ability! That meant it was a success, at least for one child. Not about to politely wait for the enemy to get up, I ran with him out into the bright daylight, and was almost blinded.

_Ugh, sun, how I hate you sometimes_. Not about to let this stop me, I continued to run, even when I felt a sharp shuriken embed itself in my back. Ow. Did this mean I wasn't going to get to come back? Altruistic instincts, I _hate_ you sometimes. I put the kid down, panting. My endurance was not the best, and I'd taxed myself to the limit without realizing it. That and I'd been carrying a kid who probably weighed as much as I did, but, somehow I thought everyone in this universe having chakra would mean that wouldn't be a problem. Guess I overestimated. "Run, kiddo."

It was quite silly of me to call them kiddo, but in the harsh situation no one noticed. Tenzo glared and shook his head. "No, you can't leave me alone!"

"I'm sorry," a voice interrupted us. "My orders are to take you back. But really, you have been quite a naughty child, haven't you? You didn't think you could honestly get away, did you?" Looking back, it was a silver haired ninja, a youthful male, a teen or even a lanky preteen perhaps. I'd always been really bad at judging ages. He wore glasses, and the light reflecting off it at the moment reminded me of a predator's glowing eyes in the dark.

"Oh, I wasn't planning to go away. But I wanted to see this one -" I jabbed a thumb in Tenzo's direction. "- happy, and no one can be happy floating in a tank."

Tenzo tried to throw up another plant, but only a small weed sprouted. I sighed, knowing we were done for here, especially if Tenzo wasn't going to flee. If he had, I would have made some attempt at distraction.

"It appears the process has not fully completed." He adjusted his glasses, a rather interesting behavioral tic. Here was someone who liked to have something occupy their hands, an intellectual type like myself perhaps. "He will have to go back in the tank."

"What? No, you can't do that!" I shouted, angry.

"I believe I can." Abruptly, he vanished from sight, and I whirled around barely quickly enough to see him take Tenzo. "Come, and perhaps I will not tell Master Orochimaru about this. You would not want to make him angry."

"Ah, but he should be pleased," I attempted to play with his mind, following along a little reluctantly, sulking over Tenzo's fate. Perhaps I could attack him if I could get him off guard? Then I spotted the masked ninja woman waiting back at the entrance, and gave up this plan. I'd forgotten about her for a moment, hoping the plant attack had finished her. She closed the opening behind us.

"Why?" he said with disdain, like I had just stated the most idiotic thing. I kind of had, admittedly.

"Because I have just proven the process works, even slightly. That is better than no results at all. And I would not have learned this if I had not tried kindness towards the boy. You see, sometimes kindness is the intelligent thing to do, and sadism pointless even for the least compassionate of people. If all you care about is results, then you should be willing to use a little kindness to get at it, yes?"

He looked pleased. "Ah, you mean like in manipulation? Perhaps you are not entirely a fool."

Wait, no, not in manipulation... gah! Way to misinterpret what I said. Some people only hear what they want to hear. "No, I mean the genuine thing, actual kindness. It has benefits in and of itself, whereas pointless malice, sadism and spite can cost you, since for one it encourages counter-spite. If you don't believe me, run the calculations on it. For many scenarios, the logic works out." Huh, they didn't have computers did they? Might be difficult to run simulations then. I hope I hadn't just assigned something impossible for him; humiliating someone isn't the way to get them on your good side. Time to make it simple for him then. "Consider a simple game. You can cooperate and both parties get a full reward, spite and get half reward but ensure the other party gets no reward, or have both parties spite and no one gets any reward. The best strategy over multiple rounds in this game is to play forgiving tit for tat, punishing spiters but periodically giving them chances to start cooperating again."

We arrived back at the laboratory, Tenzo kicking and screaming as he was dragged away. "No! Let me goo!" I felt sick and powerless, and slouched. I wouldn't forgive them for this. Please, by some miracle, let my words convince them.

"That is quite interesting. But that is for a simplified game, and hardly all scenarios of that game, correct? If there is only one round, you don't have time to establish tit for tat." Damn. Well, I'd give him that, he was a smart cookie to figure that out so quickly.

"What's your name?" I asked suspiciously.

"Ah, nothing important," the silver haired ninja chuckled. "You are quite interesting to talk to, I must say. It is a shame we have to punish you."

"...what?" I said my second favorite word with less enthusiasm than usual.

"I may have lied by implication when I said I was not going to tell Orochimaru if you co-operated to make it sound like you would not be punished at all. But the mischief you have committed can't go on."

"Why?" I said my first favorite word with no enthusiasm. He ignored me like I hadn't said anything. Admittedly I'd just asked that one to try and stall for time or some argument I could use to twist things in my favor.

He gave a nod to the woman, who stepped forward, hands glowing. "I hear her treatments, deliberately misdone 'healing', can be quite painful. Enjoy." He dipped his head and disappeared with Tenzo.

"Are you a spy?" the woman asked, pinning me down.

"No! Who would I spy for, what would I get out of it?" I was baffled but curious. What enemies did this Root have? Heh, maybe I should contact them and be an actual spy, serve them right. It would be difficult with the weird seal on my tongue, but if it just prevented speaking I'd write down what I knew or draw pictures easy enough, or physically lead them here. Lots of ways to circumvent.

"I hope for your sake you are telling the truth," she said with dark mirth, before pressing down with a chakra scalpel. I screamed like I was dying. Maybe I was.

He hadn't been lying, it hurt like hell. Then she healed me and repeated with even more wounds.

There was another scream, but it wasn't mine. I blinked and shuddered, as she fell down to the floor and whimpered, a great long blade plunged in her gut. Her blood splattered over my already soggy clothes.

"What were you doing to my student?" Orochimaru hissed. For once, and probably the only time, I was glad he was a temperamental bastard. At least until he realized why I was being hurt. I really hoped the lab mess got cleaned up before he noticed anything amiss over there.

"I was wandering out and about by myself. She was punishing me." Little lie by omission.

"Fool." He leaned to stare into the face of her corpse, as the life rapidly went out from her eyes. "Did she think I didn't know you were wandering in the night?"

I felt embarrassed. I thought he hadn't known myself. Did he put some kind of tracking jutsu on me? Or follow me on occasion without my noticing? That was more than a little unnerving, and broke any feelings of freedom I'd had with my little secrets. Unless this was just a psychological tactic to unnerve me and he hadn't actually known, in which case good job, it was working quite well.

She gurgled something, and I prayed for her to be unintelligible before I remembered I don't pray. If I did, I'd probably be really confused what with the different universes not factoring into any major religion I could think of. Seemed a whee bit important maybe.

The sannin checked me over with a diagnostic jutsu. I mimed him out of curiosity, and found this one to be much easier than an actual healing jutsu, despite also demanding yin release chakra rather than yin-yang. A precursor jutsu? I managed to maintain it for a few seconds longer. It tingled pleasantly, which helped deal with the throbbing pain in a very marginal way.

The bastard didn't give me any painkillers, once he was satisfied I wasn't going to die on him he sent me to my 'room' and left.

"Neko, you seem unenthusiastic about what I am teaching you. Do pay attention, few have this honor." He tried to pretend the next day that nothing had happened, or perhaps to him nothing really had happened, and gave me a basic lesson on self defense as my defense sucked. _Another death, so what?_ He killed all the time, I suppose, without remorse. Maybe he hadn't started as a psychopath, but, contrary to my earlier judgment, it seemed he had successfully become one.

"Do you ever miss your parents?" I was suicidally bored, if that was a thing. And at the same time sulking over my situation and his killing people problem. That death had been quite disturbing, though I suspected it bothered me less as someone who had killed them-self and faced death already.

He narrowed his eyes very slightly."What makes you think I have no parents?"

"It had a high probability of being true and was easy enough to deduce. You spoke of grief and the worthlessness of attachments. They are either dead or estranged."

"You are no idea how lucky you are Neko that I tolerate you speaking of such subjects," he said in a tone that brooked no argument and meant he wasn't actually tolerating it that much at all. "I hope you do not expect me to become sentimental." Or, warning, this could get violent fast.

"No. I was just wishing that I missed my parents," I said with amusement, before returning to my lowered head and sulking.

"That does not make sense. You wish for more pain?" he questioned. I loved being able to confuse him. But, I got the feeling sometimes everyone who ever smiled confused him and his own plastered on smiles were just fakes, so that wasn't hard.

"Rather I wish for the happiness, so that there would be something to miss. I didn't have a close relationship. I have no attachments, but it does not make me happy, Orochimaru-sensei." I raised my head slightly to look him in the eye.

"You are weak, Neko," he tsked. Oddly he seemed a bit happy. Was he teasing? No, couldn't be. Or maybe he was pretending friendliness. Some manipulators put on quite a good mask when they wanted to.

"One set of values is not inherently better or worse than another, unless you can come up with some kind of objective standard beyond 'Because'. But I agree that for this scenario, I fit poorly even by my own standards." I did not expect him to agree with me, of course. I have always been more logically minded than the people around me, even occasionally other people who like to pride themselves on logic due to my willingness to admit sometimes the choice to do one action or another came all down to emotion. (I beat wannabe-Spocks, basically) And occasionally I do something monumentally stupid, so, really, it was easy to pull the 'well, you are not that smart so I do not have to listen to you Neko!' defense, which was technically not a proper argument but it didn't stop others from using it anyway.

"You are quite self demeaning, Neko."

Huh? That was not the response I was expecting at all. Was that some sort of compliment?

"If you master the henge, I will take you outside."

"Really?" For, like, something fun? Or a mission? Well, anything was good just to get fresh air. They had put an annoying guard at my door twenty four seven. "Sweet. Oh, is the henge a genjutsu, or do you really take on a different shape?" If it was a different shape, then that was over-powered, seriously. You could do so much with that.

"A different shape."

"So what prevents you from turning into air?"

"The jutsu requires constant concentration and chakra. The interaction with the environment in a vastly different form would prove extremely taxing. Theoretically however it is possible, though the more different the transform is from the subject the more difficult it usually is. Mass is also a problem; you can't change it easily, though you can do things like stick material to yourself for extra mass or stretch or contract your volume to fake different sizes. Skilled enough ninja would still be able to notice you." My respect for him grew. He did seem to know his stuff. For a time I'd worried he might just be a hack doing random and aimless experiments.

"Hmm. Sounds ripe for modification so it doesn't require constant concentration and maintenance. Could make for an interesting experiment," I mused.

"I would be most interested in seeing your research on it, Neko." Perhaps he was just toying with me and it wasn't possible, but I brightened at the prospect.

I didn't even know how long I'd been here for anymore, but I was jubilant, working happily away, while trying to forget about the pain the human experiments were suffering until I was powerful enough to do something about it. Without meaning to, I'd started trying to live again, for their sake alone was enough, at least temporarily while I tried to resolve it. It was kind of funny. I didn't think I could convince Orochimaru to stop the experiments, and really I didn't want him to – I just wanted him to start using volunteers instead and only use humans when he had a high certainty of success in his methods! I thought I'd made a little progress, for he did talk of his animal experimentation from time to time, though I could just be deluding myself.

While practicing, I heard the door open and turned my head in confusion. Nobody came at this time, what was going on?

I attempted to dodge a row of shuriken, reacting to the sight of something hurling itself toward me reflexively. However, it was followed by a second set and that I couldn't avoid, limbs taking the blows. Shit, someone was trying to kill me! "Hey, what's this about?" I simply couldn't resist more questions.

"My deepest apologies but you've proven to be quite a nuisance," an older man spoke, flanked by two ninja. "I've been informed you are a bad influence. You've been making every ninja who listens to you act less obediently," Like how? By questioning more? Because I might be a pretty bad influence if it concerned questions. "But worse, you've been whispering in his ear and making one of our most powerful ninja behave more unpredictably."

Eh? Me? No, I was pretty sure I'd managed very little at all, thank you very much. He could be unpredictable on his own, I'm sure, if we were thinking of the same person.

"I can't believe he actually spoke to the Hokage about doing legal experiments," the man hissed. "If he had succeeded and stopped his work here, do you have any idea what you would have cost me you little rat?"

Oh, that! Yes, I did encourage that, I suppose. The fellow had me worried and wondering if Orochimaru had started petting puppies or something.

Everything went black without warning. I barely felt myself die. Once instant we were talking, the next, I was dead.

Looking on the bright side, I suppose it was for the best? I had been wanting to test death again, and I'd almost started getting _fond_ of life here despite the shitty conditions. Worse, I'd been kind of getting attached to that silly snake, even though he was abusive and liable to kill me himself someday.

The test was a success, anyway. I opened my eyes to bright light in a tiny body.

I had reincarnated again.


	4. Black Cat Luck

**Zombie Cat Science**

**Alt titles: Zombie Chakra Science or Black Cat Science.**

4**Black Cat Luck**

My next two lives had very shitty luck. In the first one, I was overjoyed at first because I was a boy. No possibility of painful bleeding puberty for me, whoo! Then I became a lot less enthusiastic as I promptly grew sick and died.

Next, I was a girl again, and feeling a lot warier and more ready to protect my life. Frankly, being a baby sucked, and I was in no mood to go through it all over again, at least for a very long time, thank you very much!

I decided being a girl was not so bad; I'd stick with it this time, provided the body wasn't disabled in some way.

I'd at least garnered lots of information, though, so that made it a lot more worth it. For one, with each life it took time for the brain to develop enough for me to become fully lucid, but, perhaps because of the memories being written into my new brain, it took less time than before to reach a semi-lucid state as I recognized my own 'out of it' state. This was actually not a good thing in my book, because skipping almost entirely right to toddler-hood was a lot more enjoyable than being a baby who could barely crawl, thank you.

I also realized that to a degree, I had to relearn language, despite having memories of it, because the brain needed to form connections in the parts responsible for understanding grammar and syntax and the like; the reason why some people if they receive an injury to the head might find themselves only able to sing their words instead of speak, and the like. This unnerved me, because what if I received such an injury and the damage to my mind carried over to my next life? But I immediately discarded this, because if it carried over I wouldn't have to relearn how to talk beyond re-teaching my muscles to behave correctly. Muscle memory I think was an exception to my having full memories, probably because I had an entirely new set of nerves and my body was all out of proportion. At least I didn't suffer any sort of body disphoria from the body difference, which was nice if unnerving. It meant the unconscious part of my mind responsible for self image – of keeping track of where all your limbs are in space and such even with your eyes closed – didn't carry over. It meant my gender identity was more fluid than it ever had been before.

I had a male-leaning to gender-neutral gender identity in my first life, but was startled and disturbed to find my new body felt completely comfortable. I even found myself _identifying_ as a girl, which was beyond confusing.

It was a bit odd then that the first time I'd been a girl hadn't been comfortable; I suppose I must have been transgender in that body then, unfortunate enough to be born with a mismatched body image that time. That was some extremely bad luck, considering the chances of being born trans are very low. On the other side of things, sexuality, that probably changed with every new life too, although I hadn't lived long enough to figure out my orientation.

Honestly it seemed like a big hassle and I was not looking forward to it – I'd been asexual in my first life and proud of it. Maybe that sort of thing stuck.

I came to study at school, after a couple years had passed. Ninja wanna-bes had to share the school with civilians at first and just learn basics like reading and writing, but, at last I was getting my life on track. And to be honest, having two years to decide whether or not I wanted to really be a ninja was nice. I was not a killer at heart, but, on the other hand I really wanted to study these things for science's sake. The ability to do that as a civilian would be greatly reduced, and I would be open to attack by angry ninja who didn't want me to know these things. If I had to live I might as well _live._

My new family was very different. This time, it was a very powerful clan, the Uchiha. To be honest, the more I learned of them the less I was a fan. They were the police, which just screamed for corruption.

One, police in any world are, frankly, prone to corruption (skip this paragraph if this line of thought bothers you). This can be limited or eliminated possibly if you draw the cops from the local community, remove the option for lethal force except when the situation clearly calls for it (no traffic cops with guns), reduce options for monetary influence, require video cameras at all times, but, I wasn't yet sure if they even had video here. Local, community run militias were a much better option than police, who are more concerned with enforcing government laws and collecting tickets to make money for the government. Mind you, I like government and am not one of the crazies who want to fuck over it if it doesn't perfectly do everything I want, and I didn't necessarily disagree with tickets as tool to save lives by encouraging buckling, but I didn't think tickets warranted the use of force and they could be used as literal scams where the cops struck up agreements with companies to rake more money out of the poor who couldn't afford to pay for the ticket outright and were stuck repaying it well after they'd given the initial amount, or even after they collected enough finally to pay the initial amount outright. Too often, cops shoot someone simply for 'disrespect'. This sometimes meant vulnerable people, like the deaf, getting shot because they simply didn't hear the order, or because they were Black and 'looked threatening' while they were on the ground with their hands in the air defenseless. The story of the cop who shot someone, then put a tazer in their hand just to frame them, unaware they were being video taped, came to mind.

Why expect this world to be any better, any less corrupt? It didn't even have a democracy, unless you counted a small council of elders voting for Hokage.

The one thing that confused me was that ninja weren't the rulers but bowed to the daimyo? Or possibly were independent entities but with their small size meant much the same as they had to depend on farmers from other villages to trade with. The hokage was like a general of an army, but in the real world an individual member of an army can't summon fireballs on their own and devastate villages. Hereditary positions of power tend to be established by generals who conquered other generals, and it's only then that the less military minded descendants appoint others to be generals for them. This meant that this current order of things, if it had started before ninja had become so prominent (a possible explanation for a rise of separation of power and military, as rulers often send sons to learn military strategy and tactics, was that ninja used to be just a subset of the military) was not entirely stable. I did recall from history class that ninja villages were only founded quite recently, with Konoha being the first. A related possibility was that with sufficient economic power, you could simply hire legions of ninja and keep control that way, and some must have risen that way.

This current imbalance of power had to give any daimyo quite a bit of paranoia. It was no wonder then that there was only a single ninja village per country; if there were many villages, they'd be even harder to control. I wondered if they even realized that being in one location like this was like putting all your eggs in one basket. It was asking for potential trouble. As well, it reduced your power; if you recruited from every village you'd have a larger pool of talent to draw from.

"Kumaiiii! What are you doing, come play with me!"

"Hm?" I opened a lazy eye from my wool gathering and peered down at little Sasuke. He was the Uchiha clan head's kid, a little spoiled maybe but I didn't mind him. I liked children. "I'm sleeping in a tree, what's it look like." Not recommended for most people, but I do not turn and shift in my sleep, just when I'm trying to sleep, so I was unworried about falling out. I closed my eye again.

"I can do that too!" he exclaimed.

"No, don't do that." I opened my eye to see him already clambering up a nearby tree. "Shit!" I leaped down, but too late; he grabbed a branch that was too small for him and it snapped under his weight. I made a dive for him, but tripped.

He hit the ground with a dull thud and laid unnaturally still.

Oh _no no no no. _I crawled over to him and checked his head, bleeding heavily. He didn't seem to be breathing. I leaned my palm over him and tried the healing palm jutsu. My chakra reserves were much better in this body, but my control, perhaps for the same reason, had started out worse. I managed the green glow far more briefly and more erratically than I liked. Still, I think it worked, as he took a shallow breath. His eyes were open but glassy.

"Sasuke? Please respond."

I yelled for help.

He was in a vegetative coma.

I fell into another bout of depression, an extremely bad one. It was a familiar black mood, and I knew it had spelled the end for me once before. Frustration came over me. Perhaps all I needed to do was kill myself often and rapidly enough and the death would finally stick.

Visiting him in the hospital, though, I reconsidered. Maybe I could take advantage of this to give him back his life. There were soul techniques. His brain still had him somewhere in there, if possibly too damaged to live beyond breathing at the moment. If the problem was just that he'd lost his soul or had it damaged somehow, and you needed that in this universe to stay conscious, perhaps I could kill myself and solve his coma problem at the same time by giving him mine? The poor fucker would likely end up getting some of my memories, but, so far my reincarnations hadn't totally rewritten the brain, so, better a few mismatched memories than dead, right? I could maybe, tentatively assume the living corpse jutsu Orochimaru spoke of having worked on replaced the poor subject's mind with his; he'd spoken about overpowering them. I'd just have to let him overpower me instead.

Then I would finally be dead, and I'd have done a good deed in the process. Alright. Made me wish Orochimaru had shared more, but, I had something to work off of. I just had to go through the obnoxiousness of inventing a new jutsu.

Or did I? With my body leaping habit, maybe all I had to do was kill myself next to him, and my soul would try him out as a possible residence all on its own. Mentally I rolled over the few soul related scrolls I'd read. There was the summoning (pretty surprised and pleased he'd let me have a look at that, if creeped out by the details. Unfortunately I'd died before I could thoroughly look over it) but that was useless. Then there was a jutsu for the user to detach their soul from their body temporarily. He had probably figured I couldn't get up to much mischief with that, as it alone was pretty useless, but might get inspired for something he personally could benefit from. On the other, it was S rank and I was a kid, so maybe he figured I just wouldn't be able to do it. There hadn't been a lot of information on the scroll besides the hand signs. Perhaps I had a natural affinity for it with my situation.

It was exactly what I needed, though my soul was certain to re-attach within a second or two, so, I'd have to develop it. The next step seemed obvious, though: pour chakra into it for maintenance and for my soul to have something to manipulate. If I weren't careful, I'd just, I dunno, accidentally re-develop the Yamanaka mind control jutsu. That really wasn't what I was aiming for. Although that was spiritual energy, not the soul, wasn't it? Otherwise no one would be teaching it to their children.

I went through the hand signs. Tiger → Ram → Rat → Horse → Boar → Hare.

Detaching my soul felt... weird. I stared back at my body for a moment, which for no good reason fell unconscious. I felt the chakra draining, and the moment it ran out my soul snapped back into place. I immediately realized a flaw. If I hadn't been touching my body when it ran out, I might have simply died and gotten reborn as a baby again. Bleh.

I cast myself into him, pulled all my chakra up, prayed to science, and, severed the connection to my old body.

Eyes blinked open wearily. A heavy in take of breath. Head pounded with horrid pain. A hospital room steadily coming into focus. _Did it work? _

Did what work?

Sat up. Looked down.

Oh gods. Kumai-chan! She was sprawled half limp on top of me across the bed, knees on the floor, drooling blankly on me. I yelled frightfully, "Ahh!" and pushed her off me, squirming off the bed to get far away from the corpse, grossed out.

Medics immediately came in.

Well, that was a little silly, getting grossed out by my own dead body. Wait, what? I clutched my head in pain. I remembered her, me, leaping in, and was utterly confused. I mentally went through recent memories, more and more baffled. _I killed myself? But I remember climbing the tree, and Itachi poking me earlier over breakfast..._

"You're awake! What happened?" One medic said, another checking 'Kumai', also once known as Neko, not that they knew that.

"She's dead!" said the other medic, shocked. "Not a mark on her."

"She used a jutsu to kill herself and revive me." I knew this. We. No, there was only one voice here, not two, so not we. It was very strange. Was I Sasuke who simply received some of her/his memories? Was I her who had received his? I still remembered – or rather just now 'remembered' for the first time with the new memories, how to think more analytically. That was part of Neko's personality, the habit of mentally reviewing all the details and looking for new angles. That automatically made me more alike. Heck, considering how much time they – we, ugh, spent on it, it was in danger of consuming the less developed habits and making me her twin. 'She' wasn't really the right pronoun for someone who was potentially you and also currently not identifying as female, but there probably wasn't one in this bizarre instance.

Since it was _their_ wish to die and let Sasuke live anew, I groped for Sasuke's memories, reveled in it, his impulses, tried to let him lead to let _them_ fade far into the background. Last thing we needed was to get suicidal again. Being a little boy with a loving family, if a bit strict, was nice, fun... much better than being a fucked up adult who repeatedly killed them-self.

I stared at the body.

"Thank you, Kumai." I bowed, before someone grabbed me and ushered me out away from the disturbing sight. They hoisted me into their arms for a hug and I clung tightly back. _Itachi! Big brother, you came from your busy schedule to check on me!_

"I'm so glad you're okay, little brother. Never scare me like that again."

I was glad too. I seized on this opportunity to to get his attention. "Play- I mean, train with me?" He almost never did! It was so lonely.

"Of course I will." Yes!

The other me had played with me – damn that was a weird thought – but they were gone now, hopefully. That made me kind of sad. Why did you have to do that, Neko? Why did you have to hate yourself so much? I could have maybe woken up from the coma on my own!

No you/I wouldn't have. They were getting ready to pull the plug on us! And be careful, this could develop into multiple personalities, silly.

_We are not silly. We are very serious._

Ugh, my thoughts are so scattered, disjointed. I rubbed my head again. I was aware of where all the thoughts were coming from, could choose from where to 'pull' them, but it felt like two different sources. Which it kind of was.

"This is important. Do you know what jutsu Kumai used? How did you know she used a jutsu, were you aware this whole time?"

"Um, I don't know what she used," I lied. "I just swear I woke to her whispering 'no Jutsu!' and falling over dead on top of me."

"Perhaps she gave her life energy to you. She was always a strange, but intelligent girl. None of us ever suspected she could do this, though. It must have been an entirely new jutsu she developed by herself." A small frown appeared on Itachi's face. "Disturbing that she didn't tell anyone. Her mother will be upset."

..ah... yeah... I felt guilty. I had never -

Sorry, _Neko_ had never been good at attaching, or acting on attachments. But _Sasuke_ was different. It would be different, this time. I would be happy, I hoped.

"Don't worry, it isn't your fault," he insisted. "I'm selfishly glad she did."

I had no idea just how selfish he was.

.

.

5**Pawprint Collecting**

**.**

**.**

My head settled down after awhile. Hanging out with Itachi, which Neko had never done, although Sasuke had admittedly almost never done that himself either, helped. I felt entirely like Sasuke then. He only hanged out with me the once before going back to his old habits though. It was difficult to tell which was which, but, thankfully there were clear differences between Sasuke's habits and Neko's, and I _hoped_ that meant I was just a very confused Sasuke with some of Neko's memories. Neko was just going to disappear, just as they wished. So there were little artifacts, more advanced thinking than before, but I'd always been a fast learner, right? Nothing too strange...

Itachi was still better. To some degree, maybe I let him be, afraid, for as time went on it became harder and harder to distinguish myself from what Neko once was. To another, I simply couldn't match him; his chakra was so much more developed than mine, his skill. I hated disappointing Father, but, it seemed like nothing I did, even scoring top of class, ever pleased him. So I tried to put it out of mind until I could think of something to make him notice me for more than my brother's shadow.

The Academy was fun, once you started learning actual ninja jutsu, like the Main Three, which I had brief familiarity with reading before in the previous life with Root. The replacement jutsu was interesting. Replace with something of similar weight to you? Like with the transformation, I had the idea of replacing myself with air for a use-anywhere get-out-of-jail-free teleport, although one likely limited by line of sight (or was it? More like line of chakra.). You'd just have to calculate the right volume and mass. Then again, air didn't weigh very much. Only about a kilogram for a cubic meter.

So, my length, times width, height, that'd be my volume. If I just needed to displace the same volume as myself, that would make things easy. But they'd said weight, not volume. Might actually be mass that mattered. So, my weight times weight of air times cubic meters? Hoped I wasn't butchering this math. Well, cubic meters got pretty crazy quickly. Emptying entire rooms of air didn't sound like a good idea. Although, against an enemy that could be quite a lethal tactic. The physics of this world were quite abuse-able.

There were tests I could do, perhaps. I could take a log, weigh it, substitute with it, then chop it up into pieces and see if that made a difference in chakra use.

Damn it, I was thinking like Neko again!

And yet, who could resist?

Trying it out with the log, I grinned as I found out it did, a little. I guessed because I had more surface area and separated parts spread out from each other that my chakra had to grab on to.

"Oy oy, what you doing?" an orange-wearing loudmouth peered over my shoulder.

"Nothing important, Naruto. Just practicing. As _you _should be." I reminded him.

"Teme! Stop acting so cool all the time!" Was he insulting me or complimenting me? Idiot. I refrained from calling him an idiot out loud, though.

I had met some other children, but was discouraged to hang around with non-Uchiha. I didn't get this weird tension towards outsiders, didn't like it, but, things seemed peaceful enough for now. I had met Naruto, who was the class clown and dead last. I found how full of himself he was a bit annoying, always going on about what a great ninja he was. For some reason, he took a dislike to me and called me 'teme'.

Well... I may have sniped sarcastically at him a couple times. I didn't mean it too aggressively, sometimes pausing and moving away from impulsive insults with involuntary memories of babysitting little children welling up. A confused part of me, despite my best efforts, viewed him as someone younger than me instead of a peer my own age. Acting out didn't mean a bad kid. He just had bad guardians, whoever they were. Since all the discipline heaped on his head wasn't working, some positive attention would probably bribe him into good behavior much better.

Some girls had crushes on me, for some weird reason, but it seemed harmless. I didn't mind, honestly, they were just little kids.

Err, we were just little kids. It was normal. Speaking of...

"Forehead!" a squad of mean girls chanted. "You'll never get a cute boy looking like that!"

This society had some gender issues, telling women to obsess themselves over looking pretty, telling them they were weaker and only a few exceptional ones would ever be equal to the men. It was no wonder there was a two to one boy:girl ratio in the final years of the academy.

Feeling annoyed as a feminist, I turned my head around and faced the bullies.

"Hey, knock it off! I know you might have been told otherwise, but there's more to life than prettiness and boys. People tell you lots of things, like 'Girls have to like pink' and 'Fight like a boy', 'Girls are weaker than boys' and 'nobody will want you if you are not pretty', but it's just not true. Girls do tend to be smaller and less interested in physical activities, but once, I saw a woman who could lift the weight of a_ lion _without any chakra. She had giant, beefy arms, and people mistook her for fat because she didn't look what they thought an athlete should look like, but she was one of the strongest and most healthy women around. And she was physically stronger than all the men in her land. So don't believe all that bullshit."

I was thinking of Olympians from Neko's old world. Bulky weight lifters tended not to get advertising endorsements if they were women, even if they could lift 550 pounds, even if they were the_ strongest human as measured by weight lifting capacity_ in their country like Sarah Roble(s? I forget, Roble or Robles), which was pretty damn impressive. To call someone like that unhealthily overweight was nothing short of ridiculous, but people did for those unlucky enough not to fall under the correct 'thin lanky model' body type. You really couldn't get to be a fantastic weight lifter and still be a tiny skinny little stick, although other athletes like ballerinas could manage that.

It was actually true that testosterone makes you cry less though, just not stop crying altogether. In some societies great tears and emotion were a sign of manliness. This... might actually be one of those societies actually, I hadn't been paying attention. Obviously it didn't apply to children, who didn't have much testosterone, just grown men.

One of the girls wailed, "I don't wanna look fat!"

I sweated. "Uh, that's not what I meant."

"R-really?" the pink haired girl they'd been tormenting mumbled, staring wide eyed at me. "The strongest?" Good, maybe she'd focus on that instead of fan-girling over me.

I double-checked that no teachers were watching me or listening in. "Aye. There's nothing wrong with romance, or liking boys, or being a fan girl, and _no one_ should make fun of you for that or think less of you for it, but you should think if you really want your whole life to revolve around it. If you're really determined to anyway, make use of it and become a romance novelist or something." Pausing, I added, mostly for my own sanity and hoping they'd leave me be. "And, if someone doesn't want to be bothered or touched, you should leave them alone. If someone touches you without your permission, you should threaten to tell on them. That can scare even adults." Consent was a huge issue, so, might as well tell the 101 if they hadn't heard it before. Might help protect them from pedophiles, rapists or kidnappers, who often go after the most vulnerable and submissive first. I glanced at Naruto. "You hear that too?"

"Yeah. You're talkative all of a sudden!"

I smirked. "Well, it annoys me." Maybe, with luck, I'd encouraged some of these girls to actually go on to be ninja instead of giving up, and to not try to steal kisses like weirdoes from me. And some boys listening in to behave themselves better. I could see Shikamaru eying me out of the corner of his eye, pretending to watch clouds.

"Ahh, so cool," a girl swooned, to my extreme embarrassment. "Come hang out with us!" _I'm not that cool! I'm pretty lame compared to Itachi, for one._

"Uh, I have to go." I quickly made an excuse and I slunk away.

I arrived home, bouncing a bit. I had collected a new cat pawprint and wanted to show it to Itachi. It was a silly game, but fun, one of the few times he didn't fucking ignore me. It was kind of weird how the Uchiha all lived in a little corner to themselves, but, I suppose they liked it that – huh?

...everyone was crying. Or mother was, at least. Father was glaring at Itachi, of all things!

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Shishui is dead. I'm thinking of calling police here."

I looked back and forth between them. "You don't blame my big brother, do you? He loved him like a brother, he'd never hurt him."

This seemed to ameliorate Father a little, glare lessening. "Possibly true. But circumstances were suspicious." He was back to glaring again with those words.

"How did he die?"

Itachi sighed. "He committed suicide."

"He had a full life ahead of him, he had no reason to."

Oh. Err, this was awkward, but, I found myself believing that he did commit suicide. All the pressure and expectations could get to a person, it didn't matter if he had 'more' than other people. He'd seemed happy, but, that didn't necessarily mean anything. I felt guilty for not trying to spend more time with him. Maybe I could have cheered him up somehow.

"Sasuke. I think it's time you learned the family technique," Fugaku spoke, surprising me. He was actually taking an interest in me? "The Great Fireball Jutsu."

Oh. This was to spite Itachi, wasn't it? I bit my lip lightly. I suppose I had no choice. "I'm interested." I was seven years old, I supposed that was old enough, not that I was any judge.

He led me outside, and I made my first attempt. Mere smoke came out, which I thought was pretty good for a first try. I grinned at him.

He stared back at me in disappointment and I lost my grin, feeling empty inside. "Try again," he ordered, a hint of rage in his voice. I gulped.

.

.

Things worsened from there. Itachi became hostile to many of the clan, and they were distrustful of him. I managed the Fireball jutsu, but it wasn't considered as good as Itachi, and the new interest Fugaku showed in me wasn't a healthy one. In frustration, I acted out.

"You, me, let's do a prank," I pretty much ordered Naruto, trying not to sound angry but not really succeeding at all. Like so many other things, it seemed.

"Wha? Really, you wanna hang out with me?" He sounded so overjoyed. I was honestly baffled why, when I'd been a massive grump or neutral at best. Partly because, well, I'm grumpy in the mornings, always have been, partly he gets on my nerves when he calls me names for no reason. It made me feel a little bad.

"Yeah, why not?" I shrugged, feeling grumpy for different reasons today. I just wanted to piss off my parents, getting in trouble at school seemed a good way.

"Oooh, I got a really good one!" He did a little dance.

"Does your dad like it when you do pranks?" I said with amusement, imagining a James Potter-like fellow egging his son on. Not the biggest fan of James, but, eh, Naruto didn't bully anyone with his pranks, I liked that.

"Oh, I don't know if my dad liked pranks." Naruto stopped moving. "I'm an orphan from birth."

Oh. Crud, I didn't mean to upset him. I decided to try and cheer him. "Ah, I bet that means you're all independent and self sufficient, huh? Pretty cool."

"Whaaa? You think I'm cool? I mean, yeah, of course I'm independent! I need nobody! Believe it!"

I resisted the urge to face palm. If he really ended up believing that he'd just get into even more trouble. "Well, ah, nobody is truly independent. Other people grow our food and collect our water, build our houses for us, spin our cloth and weave our clothes, and we all depend upon the plants to live and breath and the sun to grow them."

"Oh! And the Hokage protects us." Naruto added cheerfully, back to total enthusiasm mode. Well, he wasn't hard to cheer, now was he? He wasn't so bad, when he wasn't being a pest. "That's why I'm going to be Hokage someday, believe it!"

"Yes he does," I agreed with him, figuring he'd like that. He did, beaming at me. Oddly I found myself feeling less angry now, and tried to remember the last time someone smiled at me who wasn't a fangirl or a teacher. I even found myself smiling back at him a little, my eyes a little wet.

We ultimately chose a pretty simple prank, switching the furniture in the classrooms around so one room had all desks and another room had all chairs, and one completely bare with nothing at all. It was the first of several, as I vented my anger into it.

.

.-

.

**Bloody Paw Prints**

**.**

**.-**

**.**

The Uchiha Clan died, and something in me died with them, by Itachi's hand.

He tortured me, showing me their deaths over and over again, and something _snapped, _and I felt strange, Neko's black, suicidal mood coming over me in an uncomfortably familiar way.

"I'll kill you," I roared. "I don't care what you do to me. I'll make you hurt!"

For a moment, I imagined I saw him look pained, and I hesitated. Neko had always been pathetically soft hearted, and just wanted people to stop hurting one another.

That was all he needed to escape, and I cursed myself, trailing behind. ANBU appeared, and one said something rather strange to the other: "We were too late! Did he know about the tip-off and strike early?"

"I don't know!"

Tip off?

There was one other strange thing. Someone who wasn't a Uchiha, a total no-name, lay dying in the compound. She stared up and me and coughed, "I didn't manage to prevent it after all. Better luck next time," before slumping dead.

Was there someone else like Neko out there, capable of reincarnation naturally? How had they known about the massacre? This didn't make sense. Maybe they had overheard Itachi's plans somehow, I supposed?

Well, it would be years before I could meet them again, in any case.

Why? Why had he done this? To test himself? To make himself stronger? Was it like they said among themselves, that Itachi had snapped? He had often been a very cold brother, deliberately avoiding spending time with me and poking me in the damn head; I saw this more sharply now, now that I wasn't letting the hopeful part of me that had grown up with him, loved him, do all the thinking. That was dead to me now. What good had it done, to love unthinkingly and unreservedly?

Thinking quietly... I had been ignored as the Uchiha girl. I had tried to convince myself otherwise, but I had been ignored as Sasuke, too. It seemed like every life I came to, I was destined to be pointless. Or, no, not quite. Itachi wanted me for something, didn't he?

He wanted me to grow strong for him, so he could kill me.

I suppose that was more than anyone had ever wanted for me. Definitely the most attention I'd ever received. Did that make him the best family I had ever had? I hoped not, but somewhere, in my sick, messed up heart...

I think a part of me still loved him.

.

.-.

.

_Note:_ I know there are a lot of Itachi fans... but there's definitely, in the small glimpses we got pre-massacre, room for an interpretation of an Itachi who really was not very nice to his brother, even if he loved him and was forced to kill his clan so at least one member could survive. You can love someone, be forced to do something shitty, and still be abusive to them in your own free not-coerced time. 'I have to hurt you for your own good without even telling you why' is the oldest abusive line in the book, and 'You are less important use of my time than other things' is another. All the Uchiha had serious problems, except maybe Shishui. Of course, there's also room for a very loving Itachi, since, well, we don't see much of him, unless I misremember. Mind, I haven't read the manga in a looong while, and I don't know every detail the later chapters revealed. Don't cry me a fountain if this didn't exactly follow canon, since that sort of isn't the point. You want canon, read the manga.

This was one of those sections that got briefly gone over due to a desire not to rehash every little detail of canon.


	5. Cool Cat, Outdoor Kitty

**Zombie Cat Science**

**Alt titles: Zombie Chakra Science or Black Cat Science.**

**a/n: yeahhh, kinda flopped on updating for a little while (staying up all nighters made me crash and burn)... but, here, enjoy some of my favorite chapters. thank you all for your reviews. I can see this won't be a mega-popular fic, but at least some people enjoy it.  
**

* * *

**Cool Cat**

"Why are you sulking, Sasuke? I mean, you've sulked before, but never this bad! And are you crying? You never cry! What's wrong?" Naruto put his hand on my shoulder.

"Leave me be, Naruto. I don't need anyone!" I snarled, brushing off his hand. He only grew more determined.

"Hey, you said everyone depended on something! You said, not me!"

"I lied," I hissed, tempted to toss something at him. Instead I whirled away and ran off.

There were many comforting words by many tossed my way, mostly adults, for many of the children hadn't been told of the upsetting event. But I could tell it was really Itachi foremost in their thoughts, Itachi they grieved losing, their shining star. I was an afterthought.

Naruto, confusingly, didn't give up. Not long after, he jogged over beside me staring into the river.

"I asked a teacher. Is it really true? Your whole family?"

"Yes," I stated curtly, not bothering to look at him.

"I'm an orphan too! I know your pain, I know your loneliness."

I immediately retorted, "You don't know what it's like to have someone you thought you could trust stab you in the back, the loneliness of always wondering if there is anyone you can trust ever again, the feeling of betrayal of someone who claims to care hurting you repeatedly without remorse. You know nothing." Suddenly, in my head, I was fully Neko again, reliving it all. Not just Itachi, but my whole family, claiming to love me while they ignored me. More than once now it had happened, fucking Fugaku hurt me in the exact same way, ignoring me for not being Itachi version 2.

I was an afterthought.

I couldn't trust anyone. Hadn't all my experiences born that out? Didn't everyone just use me for what they wanted? In a way, that almost hurt more than Itachi attacking me did. Almost, because I'd fucking trusted him. He was the only one I had, unreservedly. I thought he cared.

"You're right, I don't know," Naruto said softly, scooting right next to me. "But I know pain."

I turned my head to stare at him warily, feeling emotionally exhausted. I opened my mouth to yell at him, to rage, but closed it because nothing would come out, because staring into his big blue eyes I couldn't muster any anger at him. He had nothing to do with this tragedy. So I looked away again.

"You're just like everyone else. You just want to hang out with me because you want something, to be friends with someone 'cool'. Because I'm a prodigy." It was incredibly mean, and he deserved none of it, being only a child, but in my head it made a sick sort of sense. I was feeling paranoid, no, not just paranoid, this was outright despair and fear of another betrayal speaking. He didn't actually _like_ me. He'd leave the moment he found someone shinier and more fun to hang out with.

I began to walk away.

"Hey! Is that a crime now, to want to be friends, huh? You're such a teme, I don't know why I even bother to talk to you!" He yelled in frustration. Then he stopped, thinking quietly. "Wait, I never said I just wanted to be friends with you because you're cool! Did I?"

I stopped and closed my eyes tiredly, feeling as cold as everyone called me. "I've only been called 'cool' a thousand times." But... I guessed he never had used those exact words I spat at him.

"Ah," he was embarrassed. "I guess I looked like one of your fangirls! But it wasn't like that, honest! You're one of the only ones who hated me for me!"

What?

I turned to blink at him, wondering if it was possible someone was more screwed up than I was. Well, someone who wasn't an amoral murderer.

"I can tell when I listen to you, you get annoyed by me for the things I do, not just for being there! You don't look at me like I've got, like, some kind of monster in me!"

"Some kind of monster?" I lifted an eyebrow dubiously. I very much hoped he was being overly imaginative, but, inwardly I had a sinking feeling. My gut response was that, even in someone prone to exaggeration, you believe them and assume them innocent when they say someone has been hurting them. A person knows better than anyone else what's hurt them. And disbelieving children's stories has led to far too many deaths. Abruptly I switched my anger from myself and everything around me to focused concern that Naruto was in serious danger. "Who? How recently? You should tell the authorities, they could try to kill you." My child endangerment senses were blaring.

"Kill me!" he shrieked, and I plugged my ears in displeasure. "Oh man! But nearly everyone looks at me like that! The whole village! That's why I live alone, no caretakers liked me in the orphanage."

"But that doesn't make any sense," I furrowed my brow and muttered. Live alone? Who the hell let someone his age live alone?

Wait, I lived alone. Never mind then, same people. Though in my case, it was politics, everyone wanted their hands on the Uchiha heir so the terrible solution was that nobody got me. It left a bile taste in my mouth to be that sort of 'special'. I didn't _feel_ special. Damned and cursed, more like.

"It's true! They call me a demon and sell everything at outrageous prices!"

"I believe you. I still think you should tell someone."

"Ah, do you think it would help if I talked to the Hokage?"

He and Naruto were buddies? "If anyone could help, it would be him. I'm seriously confused why this would be going on, but, it could be political." I considered the options. "Maybe your parents were infamous for something? And your identity is kept top secret, but the adults still recognize you."

"What? Really?" He looked aghast. "Wait, this could be awesome! I bet they were super powerful and stuff, and that's why I'm so awesome!" Naruto always looked on the optimistic side. "And then one day my dad will turn up secretly alive and he'll be all like I AM YOUR FATHER and I'll be all NOOOO! And then defeat him, and everyone will finally love me!"

"It's a possibility." I shrugged, not really knowing the truth. "You didn't do anything, did you?"

"No! Just pranks and stuff, but they hated me even before I started pranking, I swear! In fact that's why I started, so people would have to pay attention to me beyond just glaring all the time, believe it!"

"I believe you." I walked over to a grassy bank and laid down. This situation was a pain in the butt, but, as a bonus, it had distracted me out of my funk. Demon made me think of the Nine Tailed Fox, but, he couldn't be the fox, so I dismissed that. And even if he was somehow, he clearly wasn't a malicious fox anymore.

Although... the whiskers were weird. I'd always thought they were scratches on his face, but, they did look awfully like whiskers to me now and I couldn't unsee it. "Maybe your parents had the ability to summon giant fox demons?" I suggested semi-randomly.

"Wow, that'd be cool! But wait, that'd mean they summoned the Kyuubi! No wonder everyone totally hates me!"

"Hey, it probably isn't true." I paused, thinking further.

"Oh! Maybe they weren't evil, but were framed for it! I knew they had to be innocent!"

No you didn't, you just ranted about how you'd defeat your father and make everyone love you... I mentally facepalmed. "I don't think you should live alone. We're both orphans, so, I guess you could come live with me." A part of me would rather go live with him, but he probably didn't have a lot of room. The compound was eerily empty and quiet, plates set out for meals left in place just where they were, toys abandoned in the yard, a ghost town, it gave me nightmares just being there. If anyone was planning to go after him in his sleep, they wouldn't expect him there, and I could protect him. Sort of. Shoddily. Such an empty place would have lots of places to hide, although not as many as I liked. It certainly hadn't helped any of the other Uchiha children.

_I need to get stronger. _I thought with agitation. Fighting had never been my thing, in my previous lives, although this mind... body... life was more aggressive, having been raised to fight nearly from birth for years without Neko's influence. But this world was extremely dangerous, and even a pacifist had to know some tricks if they wanted to live here. The small part of me that debated just being a civilian was silenced.

"Wow, really! Do you think they'd allow that?"

I tilted my head, thinking. "They wouldn't have to know. But if they do, I guess we could, like, get married or something? Then they'd have to let us live together." Not that I had any romantic inclinations, in fact I'd never had any romantic inclinations toward anyone and didn't really understand the whole wedding thing. But if we became shinobi, we'd be legal adults and could do as we liked, right?

"Boys_ can't get married_ to boys!"

"I don't see why they shouldn't, if they want to." Although honestly I didn't fully get why anyone wanted to marry anyone. They could be buddies without getting married, right? And who wouldn't want to live with a best friend? Why not just live with all your friends?

"But I wanted to marry Sakura."

"Uh," I hadn't thought of that. He must have a pretty bad crush on her. "I guess after awhile we could get divorced?"

"Okay! I'll tell the old man I'm going with you, and if I doesn't like it, I threaten to marry you! He'll be sure to cave in! It's the perfect plan!"

A part of my brain whispered that this all sounded like seven year old logic, but, I wasn't thinking terribly clearly, was currently also seven, and couldn't care less. "He'll probably bow to your enthusiasm, if nothing else."

.

.

The Hokage broke down in laughter and touched his head to the table, took a deep breath, and straightened upright, attempting to repress further laughter. He did not entirely succeed.

"What's so funny?" Naruto exclaimed.

"No Naruto, you are too young to get married. You can't marry Sasuke." He smoked a pipe. "I thought you didn't like him that much, only last week you were calling him a bastard, were you not?"

"Well, yeah," Naruto rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "Buuut, that was last week! This week we're totally and deeply in love, believe it!"

"Is this a prank?"

"Okay, no, it's not a prank, but you got me. I don't _really_ want to get married. I just wanted to live with Sasuke 'cuz he seems really lonely and he doesn't have **anybody** anymore, just like me! He agreed to it and everything!"

He grew concerned, thinking over Naruto's words and of the recent massacre. The mind analysts had stated Sasuke was showing signs of suicidal depression and was at risk of hurting himself. However, not only did the boy show discomfort towards the idea of a care taker, nearly any care taker he assigned to him would be politically risky and alienate the other clans who felt they were best equipped to take charge of him. A non-clan ninja would be best, but that too would risk the wrath of the major clans, seen as a snipe that a non-clan ninja could be as good as a clan ninja.

Politics. He hated it, the least favorite part of the job.

As an afterthought, he considered whether Sasuke had really agreed to this or whether Naruto was really pulling his leg out of hopefulness or desire to prank. He'd have to double check and make sure.

"Alright Naruto, I suppose it couldn't hurt. If Sasuke really wants to."

"I'm not lying, honest!"

"I just want to give him the chance to change his mind, if he wants. No need to rush in," the old man told him, feeling a little ache in his back and a crick in his neck.

"Just to clarify, you're agreeing to me moving in with him, not with us getting married, right?"

The Hokage face palmed. "Yes, Naruto." As an afterthought, he considered that all this might be a good thing. Those two could use the friendship, and it would make it easier to keep an eye on them.

Or so he thought.

8**Outdoor Kitty**

It was nice. Months passed by in a blur. I actually found myself getting along with Naruto pretty well, when I wasn't busy. I had thrown myself into study with a fury and passion I'd never shown to learning before, having always been content to go at my own steady pace and simply have fun, having no real incentive to do much of anything. The compound, for all it gave me nightmares, was so much easier to breath in.

Especially after we decided to redecorate. Naruto painted everything a bright orange, to my embarrassment, and I managed to talk him into some nice contrasting colors, black, yellow, white, a little red. I convinced him it would be less monotonous, not that he knew what he word monotonous meant.

"Hey, Sasuke? Can I ask you a question?"

"Hn," I made a small noise of agreement, absorbed in training and only really paying half attention to him.

"What's having a family like?"

I stopped. "It's horrible. People saying they love you, but then going out of their way to hurt you anyway." Memories welled up in my mind. Going up, asking for a doctor for being in so much pain it made you cry (though half of it was just the stress of thinking of having to go to the doctor), getting a lot of fuss made over you but no willingness to actually take you (you're strong, you can tough it through, you think), but only a week later _they get sick _and _they get to go to the doctor._

Telling you they love you, and ignoring you in favor of a sibling.

Telling you how glad they are you are alive. Slaughtering your whole family.

Asking for help with schooling, and always, from every family member, left alone.

How worthless you feel, for days on end.

"Gah, you're a real cheerful person, Sasuke!" Naruto managed to not let my sourness get him down.

Kind of unconsciously, despite my words, I took on a big brother role (no matter how much that made me shudder), getting him up in the morning and making him go to school on time, making him some real food. For all he complained about wanting to eat ramen, milk, and nothing else, he did seem to enjoy having someone care enough to make vegetables and eggs for him. I made sure he was caught up on his school work; sometimes, bizarrely, teachers handed him blatantly wrong material. I registered a complaint, but it didn't seem to make much of a dent in things.

Okay, that was really more like parent than older brother, but I wasn't about to let him call me dad or old man any time soon, thanks.

Learning about seals, I came upon a new theory about him, that he had something to do with the giant fox being sealed away. It was weird to think of any human being a container for a giant fox, though. Wouldn't a stone tablet you could lock far away or toss into the ocean be more convenient? It was crazy enough I wanted to dismiss it, but, I couldn't entirely. I still needed an explanation for the weird behavior of the villagers and the foxy whiskers on his cheeks.

I worked on a new project to learn about chakra. Naruto was quite interested. "What are you doing?"

"A project to learn how much chakra I or others have."

"Oooh, ooh, tell me!"

"Firstly, I borrowed a unit of measurement: a calorie. A chakra-calorie would be how much chakra it took to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree. If chakra is energy, then a calorie is pretty perfect. Now, I did run into a problem. When you are doing a jutsu, unless you have perfect chakra control, you are going to waste lots of excess chakra. So when you do a jutsu to heat water, what you are going to learn is not your 'real' chakra count, but your _effective_ chakra count, the amount you can put into use. The best technique for learning your true chakra count would be one that requires an exact amount of chakra to do, or one that someone with perfect control has already figured out the correct amount for that gives indicators when you under or over power it. At best you'll probably get a rough estimate though."

"Wha? I don't need to know all that stuff, just tell me my chakra count!"

I grew embarrassed. "Weren't you listening to a thing I said? You'll need to do a technique. I've been using a fire technique to heat water." Then, thinking, I pondered. If chakra was energy, then simply putting it into the water should heat it a bit, shouldn't it? But it didn't really act like it. The same chakra put into water didn't heat it as much as a fire jutsu blown on it did...

"But I don't know any fire techniques!"

"I guess I'll teach you one, then. Don't feel bad if you can't do it, though. It is a fire release technique after all, and you might not have that chakra nature."

"Oh boy! I'm gonna learn a super cool awesome mega jutsu!" Uh... I was going to teach him something small, actually.

"Look carefully. This is Hitsuke no Jutsu(1), a technique developed to distract enemies by setting a small fire far away from yourself." I ran through the hand signs, and set fire to a piece of paper. I hadn't been kidding, it really was tiny.

"A small fire? I wanted to do a great massive fireball, like you! I saw you in the court yard, don't pretend you can't!"

"The Uchiha have always had a very strong affinity for fire. And besides, you should start with something simple first!" I knew Fugaku would probably throw an absolute fit with me sharing family techniques with an orphan who had no clan loyalty and no reason to keep it to himself, but I was feeling generous and didn't care what the dead man thought. "It's actually pretty good for faking out your opponents, as it uses the Tiger seal, usually associated with powerful devastating techniques. So they'll try to dodge, not realizing they're still in your line of fire, even if it isn't very powerful. So it's good for annoying people." I did find myself wondering why, if substitution was a thing, it wasn't possible to just spawn techniques where ever the enemy was for every technique, buuut, I could work on that later. As far as I could tell this was kind of like that, just sending a tiny little spark of fire over.

"Ah, I love to annoy people!"

"I guessed."

-–-

Naruto worked on it, but to his upset he just couldn't get it to work. I comforted him, cursed myself for not foreseeing this, and gave him a simpler task. "Okay, instead, just spam a jutsu you know you can do really well, and tell me how many times you can do it. Then I'll try to calculate an estimate for you, okay?"

Then I thought of a sort-of problem. I was using a fire technique as a basis, but, blowing a fire at water wasn't the most efficient way to heat it... what if it didn't heat enough for me to notice any difference in temperature? Aw, well, whatever, maybe I could just reduce the amount of water down until I noticed a difference, and try to concentrate the fire on one spot instead of having it fly everywhere in a haphazard manner like in the big fireball jutsu, which was kind of overkill...

"Heeyyy, are you paying attention?"

"Mm? Oh, sorry!"

"I've been doing and redoing henge jutsu constantly and I still don't feel tired!"

"Really? Huh." I was baffled. "I guess you must have a lot then."

"A lot isn't very specific!"

"Well, sorry. You'll just need to find a more chakra intensive jutsu, I guess."

I had a suspicion that chakra had very little to do with energy, and was really just like 'magic' where the numbers wouldn't necessarily add up, that maybe two techniques with the same chakra output would have different energy results, but, all of this really didn't hurt. It was nice to have some sort of number, even if, in Naruto's case, it seemed it might as well be put down as 'infinity'. Henge wasn't really very intensive though, I was pretty sure I could keep on a henge all day myself.

What would be really nice was a substance sensitive to chakra that would react to exact amounts that could give serve as a kind of measurement. But I didn't know of anything like that. Seals, maybe? Bah.

Naruto couldn't keep his mouth shut. Soon it was all over school that I was trying to measure chakra, and everyone at the academy was bugging me. "Measure my chakra, Sasuke!" "No, measure me!"

I grew rather grumpy quite quickly. "Tch, if you can do lots of intensive jutsus, you have a lot of chakra. If you can't, you either need more practice or you don't. Stop bugging me." I liked having alone time.

"Sasuke?" Iruka's voice echoed above me.

I turned around obediently. "Yes, sensei?"

"I hear you've been working on a project. I'd be interested in seeing it. If you turn it in, I'll give you extra credit, okay?"

"Oh." Somehow, it had never occurred to me to go to a teacher. Probably because it had literately taken me five minutes to come up with it, it probably had a ton of holes in it, and I had never had a teacher I could go to when I was teaching myself before. "Naruto helped." It seemed a good time to try and get Naruto some recognition. And he did help, him playing test subject made me realize some jutsu were almost never going to make you run out of chakra.

"Did he? Then he can have some extra credit too."

"Heh," Shikamaru had a chuckle at my expense. "If you didn't want extra work, you shouldn't have told the school."

I tilted my head at him. "I don't mind, truly. Besides, genius and laziness are opposed."

"How do you figure that?" His eye gave an annoyed twitch. Looks like I got to him.

"Because laziness encourages you to take mental shortcuts, to stop thinking."

"But genius can encourage you to find more efficient use of your time, good shortcuts for long meandering paths you have no need to take," he counter-argued.

I was kind of enjoying this. "True. I suppose there could be said to be a difference between physical laziness and mental laziness, but if you're lazy in one thing, you'll easily slip into being lazy in another; an unconscious tic won't distinguish situations for you."

"...are you guys having a smart people fight?" Naruto gaped.

For people our age? I suppose it was. Then again, I'd met adults who couldn't argue this well. Shikamaru was pretty smart.

"But if the reason you are lazy is because something bores you, and mental activity is something you enjoy, then you'll never be that lazy with it. If it comes easily to you, you won't even have to put that much effort into it anyway."

"Oh really?" I said with delight. "Then you absolutely shouldn't mind taking on extra credit assignments, now should you?" I thought I had caught him now.

"No, they don't mentally challenge me enough," he yawned.

Ooh, good one. I was really starting to have fun now. "Then you could set yourself a tougher assignment. They let me choose my own project, after all."

He stopped mid-yawn. I'd gotten him. Or had I? He seemed to think furiously for a few moments, before smugly saying: "It would be too strenuous. I might have to lift up a pencil."

Now I laughed. Really? He was THAT lazy? "You could give it verbally."

"Talking that much is too much effort." Now he was just being silly. He'd pretty much given up the argument here, though. He and I both knew that wasn't a real answer.

"You're talking right now, you goof!"

He opened and closed his mouth, mouthing 'No I am not'. Little kid tactics. Made me remember that yes, he was a little kid.

I decided to count it a partial victory. I'd underestimated his physical laziness (that was probably a phrase somewhere, Never Underestimate the Laziness of a Nara, or something) but he'd been arguing from an incorrect standpoint from the beginning over the mental laziness, and no matter how intelligent you are, if your argument is dead wrong, you can't win it if your opponent is good enough. Hopefully he'd learned that today. I did believe he was too lazy to lift up a pencil to write down a special project, but maybe I'd poked him into _thinking _about what he'd do if he did lift a finger for a project that he would find mentally challenging.

"Good fight." As a joke, I made the seal of reconciliation at him. I began to walk off, when he stopped me with his voice.

"Hey. About earlier, when you talked about the strong woman. How did you know she didn't use any chakra?"

I gave him a baffled look. "I sensed it. Can't you?"

"So. You're a sensor."

They hadn't covered that in class yet, but the title was fairly self descriptive, so surprise never even registered on my face. "I don't think I'm a very good one." I'd seen it with colors at one point, but, that had been more a case of baby-hood synesthesia (sense being muddled together) and I'd later realized that it takes large amounts of chakra to give off visible light in normal circumstances, so if the synesthesia had stuck and given different colors than the actual visible chakra that would have looked quite strange to downright obnoxious. As a side note, when I had become Sasuke, I'd lost my perfect musical pitch; that did make me want to cry, because I'd thought it was really cool. But in theory I'd one day have the sharingan, which did see chakra that wasn't visible to other eyes.

At least he bought my story though, or seemed to, having 'solved' one mystery. Shikamaru may have hated to admit it, but, I could tell his laziness was giving him intellectual laziness problems. Partially, he really truly wasn't getting challenged enough, I guessed. That was a shame, but he was unlikely to motivate himself to looking for something to go all out on on his own. I'd known lazy people before, I had bouts of it myself. Well, old Sasuke hadn't, being a very dutiful son, but Neko had. Part of that was depression, exhaustion and apathy though. I just wanted to curl up and stay in one spot until I died, never lifting a finger to do anything.

I wondered if Shikamaru was slightly depressed. He might not even realize it. It sometimes manifested as just apathy, not sadness, and he seemed pretty apathetic. I later discreetly sneaked him a book on it and let him go crazy trying to guess who'd given it to him.

Speaking of apathy and depression though... I felt like I needed to get out of here for awhile. Try something new, see the world. I was going to suffocate here.

I needed a vacation, basically. And luckily, I wasn't even a genin or official ninja yet, so if I left for a little while, I shouldn't be registered as a missing nin, right? The only thing that really tied me here was Naruto and the potential for more knowledge at the Academy. I was reasonably confident I could skip a month of the Academy and have no problems. Maybe several. It had been starting to bore me, except for the physical portions. That was difficult to study on your own, you really needed a practice partner for actual fighting.

I could apply make up, dye my hair, wear nondescript clothes, use a henge, and I had money, some survival training, and basic supplies. I was pretty set for traveling. Getting up very very early in the morning (less suspicious than the dead of night; I didn't want to attract too much attention from the gate guards, if anyone stopped me it would be them), I paused to write a note, agonizing over what exactly to say. I didn't want anyone to freak out, honestly.

'Going on a little vacation. Will wear disguise to avoid recognition as a Uchiha. If caught and recognized, I'll stab my eyes out, okay?

Please don't worry, I'll be back. '

"Ehh, what are you doing up this early?"

I went very still. "Well, what are you doing up?"

"I had to go to the bathroom, I drank too much milk last night!" Naruto exclaimed. "But you didn't answer my question! Ooh, hey, what's that?" He snatched at the letter, but I jerked it away. He managed to read a line of it anyway. "Hey, that's your handwriting! Going on a vacation? What's that mean? You going on without me?"

I bit my lip. "I wanted to wander. I don't think I'll have the opportunity once I'm an adult, because if I did that I'd get labeled a missing nin. So I want to go out now." Never mind that I was a child, but, I was not a normal child and could take care of myself.

"Aahh! That's so smart but so mean! You were going to go without me! You have to take me with you, I'd be awesome at protecting us from bandits, believe it!"

I thought that was an absolutely terrible idea, taking a small child with me, but couldn't say that without him countering that I was a 'small child' too.

"If you don't, I tell on you!"

I sighed. Looks like he'd completely defeated me. "Okay, okay. We'll go on a really short vacation." Damn Naruto messing up my plans. "But you have to go in disguise, and not just henge, either. Some ninja can sense if someone is under henge, especially when the henge is by novices like us. If your parents really are infamous or something, I don't want anyone recognizing you. We should probably go as siblings, to confuse people."

"Cool! Like a spy mission! We'll need secret code names!"

"Uh, yes, we'll need new names. You can be Wang Fox, I'll be Wang Fire."

"Wang Fire? That's the stupidest name I've ever heard! It suits you perfectly," he giggled immaturely. I rolled my eyes.

"It's the greatest name of all time. You just can't appreciate beauty," I said, joking, but in my most serious offended voice. He paled for a moment, then stuck his tongue out at me.

I jotted down a little more.

'P.S, Naruto decided to tag along, the little dork.'

"Hey, scratch that last insulting bit out!"

I did so, feeling agreeable. "Satisfied?"

"You forgot to add how awesome I am, but yeah, that should be good enough!"

Looking at it, I couldn't help but think we were going to be in sooo much trouble. This made me grin madly for a moment, before pausing to wonder if maybe they'd actually injure us. Their missing nin policy was extremely cold hearted, and I wasn't sure if we were really excluded. If either of us were important to the village, and I was fairly sure I was to my annoyance, well, they might stop at nothing to get us back. Of course, if we were important, they probably wouldn't injure us, just talk us into coming home. Which we would, since we weren't genuinely trying to run away...

I wonder what were the chances they'd just think we decided to skip school for a month and never bothered to track us down?

Probably not very.

We headed out, after Naruto packed a gazillion things of ramen, and in a spot of bad luck met, of all people, Shikamaru.

"What are you guys doing up this early, with such a large backpack? Planning to go camping?"

"Something like that," I admitted.

"We, uh, were training!" Naruto attempted to come up with an excuse. Shikamaru gave a flat look of disbelief. I noticed he was holding my book on depression I slipped as a gift near his home. "Hey, maybe you could come with us!" Naruto said, grinning. "The more the merrier!"

"If I can take Choji. Where are we going?"

"Oooh, while we are it, we should get Sakura! She's awesome!"

"What? No!" I exclaimed. "I didn't even want to take you, and now you're taking half the academy with us?" We're going to be in so much trouble. Naruto looked at me beggingly. Taking a breath and making a decision I was sure I was going to regret, I relented with a shake of my head. "Fine. But anyone who wants to come has to be able to do henge." Maybe this would shake Shikamaru out of his apathy a bit. And if I was going to get assigned to a team with people some day, getting to know some potential team mates wouldn't hurt. "And if you want others, you have to find them quickly. I want to scoot out of here pronto before anyone realizes we're up to mischief."

"Okay! I'll go look for Sakura and Choji right now!" Naruto fist pumped the air and ran off. Shikamaru didn't make a move beyond folding his arms and looking at me skeptically.

"Is this a prank?" Shikamaru asked, not an unreasonable question.

"We're leaving the village for a vacation. If we do it later in life, we'll get labeled missing nin and hunted down. As it is, we'll still get hunted but they should go easy on us. It'll be a very interesting mission trying to avoid trackers. You in?" I smirked mischievously at him.

"I already said I was." Shikamaru was starting to smirk too. "This should be interesting. What plans have you made to avoid trackers?"

"To be honest, my biggest plan was to use Naruto once he decided to tag along. He has lots of experience slipping away from ANBU, so he's the best bet here. Before that, I was going to make an excuse to the guards to slip out through the gate, see if they buy it, if not slip over the gate elsewhere. They are experienced ninja, so deception like using henge might make us more likely to get caught, not less. Then I'd focus on getting as much distance as possible before anyone realizes I'm not coming back shortly, which if they buy the excuse should be awhile. With so many kids tagging along, making an excuse might be easier or harder, frankly. Although, they'll be looking for intruders trying to get in, not trying to get out, so in that we'll have an advantage."

"You realize a lot of bad things could happen to us out there, right? Bandits, among other things. Any ninja who recognized our bloodlines would go after us in an instant. It's dangerous, not a great idea for a joy ride."

"I know. I'm going to take steps to mitigate that. I was thinking of heading toward the land of Tea. It doesn't have a ninja village, is right next to the land of Fire, and it doesn't really have anything important in it except tea." Tea was very important. Uncle Iroh drank it after all. "Another possibility is the land of Waves, which is bordered by the land of fire and by the land of Wind which is an ally to us. Although, heck, if things go well we might as well visit both."

"They probably won't expect us to leave the country," Shikamaru mused. "And if they worry about defection, they'd be checking borders with lands that have hidden shinobi villages, not no-name lands."

"Well, they might be expecting it, actually. I plan to leave a note that we're going on vacation so they won't freak out too badly. I don't want them all thinking we've been kidnapped."

"Ah, yeah, not a bad idea."

Naruto came back. He had Choji, Sakura, and to my disappointment, even more children with him! Hinata, Kiba, Shino, and Ino! My eye started twitching in anger. "Good grief. Why not just take the entire Academy while we're at it?"

"Ah, sorry guys. I couldn't avoid attention with Sakura and Choji following me! Kiba demanded to know what we were doing since he always likes to skip out from class with me, and then Sakura said she wouldn't go without Ino because they were best friends, and then Shino walked into us, or really I ran into Shino on accident, sorry Shino-"

"I get it, I get it." I held up my hands.

"You're leaving the village to mess around? This sounds like a profoundly stupid idea," stated Shino.

"Only for a little while! And I was planning just me, but then he decided to drag absolutely everyone into it." I pointed at Naruto and threw up my arms in defeat. "Alright, who here has tracking skills?"

"I do!" Kiba raised his hand proudly, his puppy barking agreement.

"I can, but I don't know if I want to be involved in this," Shino stated bluntly. "I think it would be my obligation to tell on you all before you get into immense trouble."

"Aww, don't be like that!" Naruto shouted. "This could be so much fun, everyone together on an adventure!"

"My apologies, but I have concerns other than fun." His voice was frosty.

I decided to ignore him for the moment, since he hadn't left yet. "It's your loss."

"No one likes a snitch, Shino," Shikamaru stated bluntly, aiming at him psychologically. "If you stay, you might make some friends." Shino flinched slightly at this. It was a bit cruel, but, it was also fairly true. I was interested that Shikamaru had decided to take my side, though. I would have thought he'd find it far too troublesome. Perhaps he yearned for a little mental stimulation and his earlier apathy was part of that, like I'd wondered earlier. Or maybe he figured he'd help protect us from our own stupidity, at least check me out and see if I had half a clue what I was doing.

"Anyone who wants to come, has to be able to do a henge. Raise your hand if you can." I raised my own hand.

Everyone else did too. Great, I got a bunch of prodigies on my hands. I waved us all to start walking together. "Okay, let's huddle somewhere a little more discreet. We'll have to gather supplies."

"Choji," Shikamaru's tone took on the air of an order. "Go get food. Since you love food, it won't be suspicious if you get enough to last a week for everyone, and only you know how much you need to eat." He dug into his pocket and gave the boy money. "Hmm, I don't think that will be enough."

"Oooh, get lots of ramen!" Naruto shouted.

I dug into my own pockets, having prepared money for myself ahead of time. "Here. You won't need to get any for Naruto by the way, he already packed his ramen."

"Aww!" Naruto pouted. "But more ramen is always better..."

"Get something meaty!" Kiba said loudly.

"Ah, Kiba, it'll have to be dried or canned, we don't want it to spoil," Hinata said shyly, blushing as she spoke and looking down at the floor, looking like she had the urge to hide.

"Er, right, what she said." Kiba said.

"If we're going to camp, I think my mom and dad have some tents," said Sakura thoughtfully. "We went camping once."

"That would be really useful, Sakura. That's a supply we don't have to buy while trying to avoid suspicion. Go run out and get that, if you can."

"Okay!" She saluted and ran off.

"Kiba, how do we avoid being tracked by smell?" Shikamaru asked, since I had gotten distracted by Shino originally when I asked who had tracking skills. I'd meant to ask the same question eventually, but, he beat me to it.

"Hmm, that's a tough question. Going over rivers and mingling over areas populated by heavy traffic can help. Taking meandering crisscrossing trails helps too, although that takes extra time." Kiba sat, hands to chin. "We could try perfume or heavy odors to alter our scent, but if they realize we've perfumed we'll be even easier to track than before, so it's a risk."

Shino nodded. "I would recommend that as a last resort."

"So, you decided to come?"

He nodded stiffly. He was quite hard to read, but I offered him a small smile and a handshake. "Alright. No hard feelings, then." We shook hands.

Ino raised her hand.

"Yes?"

"I love fashion, so, I was thinking I could help you guys do disguises! Where are we going first?"

"Ah, I was thinking land of Tea, then maybe Wave if you lot aren't thoroughly homesick by then. It's a nice little place without ninja, next to the land of Fire, and, well, I want to sample what's supposed to be the finest Tea in the world."

"Okay, I think I heard of what they like to wear there. I saw some travelers from there once, I'll help us blend in! This will be a piece of cake."

"Cool. I was thinking we should all dye our hair, too, can you help us with that?"

"Certainly." She nodded her head. "Something nondescript, browns and blacks would be good. Sakura is going to freak, she loves her pink hair, but, she's just too recognizable, isn't she? Alright, this will be a piece of cake!" She clapped her hands together excitedly and ran off.

I was surprised at how well everyone was working together, how well all of this was coming together, and I felt a little proud. It might be a makeshift team, but these guys were great.

"...I feel embarrassed I can't offer anything I can do." Hinata sighed miserably.

"Oh! Hey, that's not true. With your Byakugan, you can scan behind us and in front of us for danger and trackers. You're the most important part of this team so far." I comforted her.

"R-really?" Her strange misleadingly blind-looking eyes grew big.

"Really." I affirmed. "You'll be protecting us, along with Kiba who will smell for danger." Kiba seemed to brighten at that.

"Wow," she whispered, before growing determined. "I won't fail you, I promise!"

Choji arrived back, carrying a large backpack full of... scrolls? "I had them sealed," he said proudly. "Being able to carry your food without it spoiling on you is an important skill to my clan!"

"Wow, good job, I'm really impressed." That meant, hopefully, he'd gotten a much better selection than just dried rations. I admit I hadn't been looking forward to potentially just eating the same thing over and over again. I really was beginning to be pretty impressed by everyone.

Sakura ran in with camping supplies, and Ino with clothing, make up and hair dyes not much longer after that, her selection for us quite impressive. We couldn't wear the clothes just yet, though, that should wait until out of the village, although Hinata got to wear goggles straight off since they were harmless enough. Amazingly, Ino had an alibi for us already to get out, collecting herbs and flowers. It was something she'd done before.

We set out, got out the gate with no problems, but immediately realized a problem.

"Where's Shino?" Shikamaru stated with concern, scanning around.

"Ah, damn, he ran off to snitch on us!" Kiba yelled.

"Oh no!" exclaimed Naruto.

_Oh crap. _I thought, and burst into a run.

.

.

Hinata scanned behind us. "We're.. in deep deep trouble."

"Did they send ANBU after us?" I said with concern. That seemed a bit over the top, really.

"No, worse. Our... our parents." Hinata shivered in fear and looked like she might faint.

"Oh man!" Kiba freaked out and ran around in circles, Akamaru barking wildly. "I'm so toast! Mum must be so pissed!"

"Shino must have told them our plans to go to the land of Tea," I stated. "So, we'll go to the land of Waves instead. We can still have some fun before we get caught. Unless you guys want to give up now?"

"We've gone this far already," commented Kiba. "I'm not getting in trouble for nothing!"

"Me either, I haven't eaten all the best food I picked out yet," said Choji with a frown.

"I wanted to go someplace new! It would be so droll to stop now," exclaimed Ino.

I exchanged glances with Shikamaru, who sighed. Everyone else seemed to be in agreement. We were keeping on with these shenanigans.

"Ah, they are heading straight toward us. How could that be?"

Shikamaru's eyes widened. "Check yourselves for bugs!"

Bugs? I blinked and carefully felt through all my clothes. Yes indeed, there turned out to be a little bug. "Sorry Shino," I was about to squish it, but stopped myself on second thought. "Okay, everyone, put your bugs into a bottle."

Everyone had been tagged with a beetle. We were losing time. "We need to scatter these bugs to confuse them."

"Yeah, believe it! I'll set traps and decoys to annoy them!" Naruto jumped up and down, before grabbing the bugs. He was sporting nice brown hair now, instead of blonde, and his whisker marks had disappeared under makeup that made his face slightly darker like he had a tan.

"Don't sidetrack too much, or you won't be able to catch up with us."

"Okay, okay." Naruto looked worried and exasperated at the same time. "Sheesh."

"Try tossing one of the bugs in a river. It should travel a far way," added Shikamaru.

"Good idea." Naruto ran off, but not before I pointed him in the direction we'd be heading. I hoped he wouldn't get lost.

"Kiba, you help us start setting false trails."

"Got it," he saluted, and started to lead us. Once satisfied we headed on our way to the Land of Waves. And, to our surprise, some of the parents shortly headed back to the village, according to Hinata. Probably to get professional tracker ninja on the job.

.

-–-

.

He was uncertain why he had been called in, but he knew it had to be a mission of some sort.

"Kakashi, this is unlikely to be dangerous, but it is extremely important. It concerns all of the most powerful shinobi clans, and must be kept an absolute secret," Sarutobi spoke in his office.

"Oh?" Kakashi tilted his head curiously, leaning lazily against the window.

"A number of children, including the Hyuuga, Yamanaka, Akimichi and Uchiha clan heirs, have run off. The Kyuubi container as well, and some of the parents are ranting about the Kyuubi kidnapping their children."

Kakashi straightened in surprise. Uchiha and Uzumaki... "Are you certain it wasn't a kidnapping by enemy ninja?"

"Not absolutely, but a boy, Shino, came to us and was the first to alert us to the run aways. He seemed convinced they were leaving without an adult and of their own free will. He set bugs to track them, but they managed to detect it and take the bugs off into decoy trails."

Very interesting, much better than expected from a group that hadn't even graduated yet. "And they've honestly managed to evade detection?"

"Yes. They've even set up false scent trails, likely the work of the Inuzuka heir. His mother set off tracking him, you are to join her on this mission. Shino stated they were planning to go to the land of Tea."

"Who's the ringleader?"

"Ring leaders. It was started by Sasuke Uchiha trying to sneak off on his own," they exchanged looks over this. There could be all sorts of reasons the troubled boy might want to leave, and the most dangerous was that he might be trying to search for Itachi. "However, he got side-tracked by Naruto, who dragged in Shikamaru." He'd heard the two boys had some affection for each other, so that relieved him. If he did care for the other boy, he might avoid deliberately pulling him into danger. Hopefully. Vengeance could be blinding.

"Shikamaru?"

"Shikamaru Nara. He appears to be the second ring leader. It's odd, as by all accounts he is usually a laid back and lazy boy, but either Naruto or Sasuke seems to have motivated him somehow. His parents are completely baffled why he would want to engage in this, although they theorize it might be to get out of doing school for awhile." That was dangerous. A motivated Nara could do wonders, even if they were a child. But it made much more sense now that they had managed to evade search parties.

"Any other locations they might head to?"

"The Land of Waves was mentioned as a possible next destination, for it's lack of ninjas and proximity to the land of Fire. That's what they wanted in a location; not an unintelligent choice, and one that gives me relief over the idea they might meet enemy nin, but I'd rather they stayed in the land of Fire in the first place."

"Then that's where they will be headed. They won't go to the Land of Tea like planned after Shino snitched on them." Kakashi said, mostly to himself, as he was sure the Hokage had already guessed this. Bah, what a terrible mission, retrieving a bunch of brats!

.

.

We had a lot of fun, putting on a henge to appear as adults and going from town to town. We camped, roasted marshmellows (thank you Choji!) and hotdogs, romped, tried to catch rabbits, told ghost stories, and I actually found myself enjoying things and unwinding a bit; normally I was a lot more antisocial, but I roasted hot dogs along with the rest of them. After finding a strange bug I couldn't identify, I wished for a moment Shino had come along.

Hinata spotted some ninja at one point, completely unrelated (most likely) to any trackers after us, so we easily gave them a wide berth, being that they had no interest in us and we had no interest in them.

One town on the way to the other country was having a nice festival, so we stopped there to partake and have fun. We got masks, I chose a cat, and Naruto, obliviously, chose a fox, Choji chose a shark, Kiba a dog, Shikamaru a deer, Hinata a bunny, Sakura a peacock, and Ino mimed me by getting another cat. We watched fireworks and ate popcorn, and had a food fight with it too.

While there I felt a strange and familiar chakra presence, and paused, worried. "Ah, you guys stay at the inn, I'll be back. I'm going to scout. If I don't come back, assume it isn't safe and leave straight home, okay?" My sense only worked very close range, and he was extremely dangerous, too dangerous to be this near to us.

"I couldn't abandon you! I'm coming with!" Naruto bounced on his bed.

"I mean it, Naruto, stay here or I'll ruin your ramen for a month." I scolded him. He shrank back, chastised and horrified anyone could think of such a monstrous thing to do.

What was _he_ doing here, so close? If he was planning harm, I'd have to discreetly move my group out. I'd never forgive myself if my impulses led to more kids dead. He was wearing a straw hat and a long black cloak that hid much of his figure, walking by the crowd. A glimpse of him made me second guess, as he didn't look the same... but no, that chakra, it had to be...

Orochimaru.

"Just passing through, or staying for the festival?" I asked, hoping I didn't provoke the very violence I was hoping to avoid.

"Passing through. Such festivities sicken me," his familiar cold voice answered.

Relief filled me and I bowed, "Sorry to hear. Thank you for indulging me." I rapidly turned to leave, trying not to seem frightened. Unfortunately, it seemed I need to work on my acting skills, because his voice stopped me.

"Why did you ask?" he said suspiciously. "The development of your chakra, it's more than a civilian. Could it be you recognized me?" Great. I was risking everything for nothing, he hadn't even been planning anything here. He was too sharp a ninja not to notice I seemed off, too nervous for an innocent child asking questions, so, stupidly, I'd caught his attention.

"I mean no trouble." I immediately held up my hands in peace. "And if I did run off to tattle, you were planning to be going anyway, right? You'd be long gone."

"Who are you? No games." He reached out his hand towards my face, killer intent beginning to pour upon the air, and I realized I was still wearing my cat mask. I inched back a bit.

"We've met before, but you probably don't remember me. It was fun talking science with you. Not that you care for sentiment, but I've missed that a bit. I wish you well. You look like you are doing quite alright." It was stupid, but, I was the kind of person to attach to a pet shark even if it tried to bite my arm off, despite my best efforts to keep emotionally detached from every living thing. I was just that sort of guy. And I wasn't much for deception or lies, unfortunately; I supposed I'd make a shit ninja for this, letting my heart talk for me.

"I don't, and I am not in the habit of forgetting people I've worked with, little boy. I especially think I would remember one as tiny as you." His eyes narrowed, and despite my stepping back no distance increased between us, it decreased rather. "The only one was - " he stopped mid sentence, faltering in his path and letting his arm drop low, staring at the cat mask.

"Neko." He finished, as I leaped, he grabbed at me, and I vanished in smoke.

In the same moment he came toward the end of his sentence, I decided to high tail it out of there, substituting myself just in time to avoid the grab, which I only got away from because I started to substitute _before_ he began the grab, taking advantage of his dawning realization and his shock that Neko could possibly still be alive. Most likely, he'd seen my dead body, or perhaps Root had been thorough in order to avoid his full wrath and I had simply vanished. Instead of me, he found himself grabbing a shocked old man, and in frustration he threw the man aside. "Oy! What in the world!" the old man shouted, stumbling.

I substituted several times across the massive crowd, hoping to lose him, but saw the most amazing and terrifying thing. The crowd seemed to part ways like a sea as he practically flew across the road with inhuman speed. I made the sign of the tiger and vanished and reappeared repeatedly chaotically across the block, atop roofs and behind shop stalls and around corners, but it wasn't enough. As I leaped across a roof to another and looked around to see if I lost him, arms wrapped around my back and about my chest and yanked me up, letting my legs dangle in the air. It reminded me of how excruciatingly tiny I was right now.

I didn't kick or scream, but went very, very still, trying to resist the childish urge to wiggle. He had my arms pinned too, so I couldn't make signs. I looked up at him, trying to gauge from that fairly emotionless face how pissed off he was, blinking with my big kiddish puppy eyes straight at his yellow ones. Slowly, he held me with one arm and used the other to pull off my mask. I noted a ring on his hand that hadn't been there before, to my puzzlement.

"You don't look like Neko," he said, oddly breathless, though he couldn't possibly be winded, his voice a mixture of disappointment and puzzlement. "And they should have grown by now."

"I died and reincarnated. Remember my joking question of whether you could like someone if they were immortal?" Deciding to cut off any freakish experimentation he might want to do on me, I added to his annoyance: "By the way, I'd like to not be kidnapped again, however much I enjoy your company. Please do not annoy me too much, or I'll kill myself again, like I've done before." Unable to resist, I wiggled my legs a little in the air. "I don't suppose you know what happened to me before?"

There was a spike of killing intent, but like usual, such things did nothing to me. "Do you know why I was banished, Neko?" So he was banished.

"Did someone finally find your illicit experiments?" About time. I liked him more than I should, but that didn't mean I wanted him to get away with his crimes. I told him to stop his inhuman ones, it was his fault if he hadn't listened.

"More like Root decided to spill on me when I went on a killing spree on their own members," he laughed. "It annoyed me when they tried to tell me what I could and could not do, and then had the guts to murder my own assistant." Assistant? So that's what he thought of me. A good term for what I had been, I supposed. "But you were toying with me this entire time, weren't you? You had the secret of immortality all this time." His grip turned painful, nails digging into me.

"I was actually very truthful with you. I told you how I would go about immortality: natural reincarnation after death. And believe it or not, but I'm not that old. I never reached past young adulthood in any life, and I didn't reincarnate intentionally, being just a civilian in my longest and first life. It just happened."

He put me down, but didn't let go of me, holding my shoulder. I turned around to face him. "So you thought by researching with me you could figure out why, hmm?"

"No. When I first volunteered, I had no idea what you were researching. I was just bored and had no incentive not to die. But what of you?" Come to think of it, his chakra didn't feel quite as strong as before. "Did you achieve your goal? You feel a little sickly."

"I achieved a kind of reincarnation of my own. Living Corpse Reincarnation," Great. Not that one. "I can steal the body of another. But it has a great flaw. To my annoyance, every body I take rots within three years. I nearly died looking for one this time."

"You were foolish, Orochimaru," I berated him. "When I said you should test to make something safe before you use it on humans, I didn't just mean for any unfortunate test subjects, I meant for you too."

"I don't need a lecture from a child," he spat.

"Too bad. Your unethical behavior has gotten you into trouble, and frankly, you deserve it, Orochimaru." He looked ready to kill me for daring to scold him so. "But I am still fond of you, so I may be willing to help you out of this mess. For all you know, each body will rot faster than the last, leaving you dead before you know it." This made him stiffen, and I knew I'd frightened him even if he barely showed it visibly. This was someone terrified of death. "Haphazard experimentation can get you killed."

"What would you recommend, oh wise one?" There was a bit of sarcasm.

"Firstly, I'd start experimenting with animals, like I recommended the first time." I was annoyed he hadn't listened to me, but, I suppose he'd gotten upset and forgotten when I found me dead. That would be distracting to me too, so the forgetting was forgivable. The forgetting because hurting people was a habit part, though, not so much. Or perhaps, because this was a very messed up person, he'd abandoned my methods because he saw my death as a sign of weakness and it upset him. I supposed it was partially pity motivating me now, and a stupid, moronic part of me that wanted to fix everyone and everything. But... a standard had to be set in place. If I was giving him a chance, then it would be one chance, one choice to behave. No more than that. "Second, I'd like you to consider something."

"Oh?"

"You'll like it. It concerns snakes." I thought of an analogy he might like. "Snakes and rats are two very different creatures. Each manages to survive in their own way, occasionally eating the other, no way of life truly better than the other. The rat looks after its family, and the snake happily lives alone and abandons its young to fend for itself. From the snake's perspective, the rat is foolish to spend all that energy on something other than itself, and from the rat's perspective, the snake is foolish to let it dine on its eggs and babies unguarded." Then I smiled. "But, they are not bound to this way of life. Even a rodent will abandon its young sometimes, and even a snake will sometimes look after its nest and huddle together for warmth and protection with other snakes. It takes a flexible person to consider the viewpoint and values of another being, to consider a different strategy from the norm. Are you as flexible as a snake, Orochimaru?"

It should not be hard to deduce what I was asking, even if I had not stated it bluntly, unless he had brain damage that made it difficult to grasp abstract emotional concepts (as some pyschopaths did), although in such a case he was likely to answer while only _pretending_ to understand.

He looked calculating for a long while, and I knew it was likely he would agree simply to aid himself, not because he had any real change within himself. But I knew my argument was one he'd have difficulty getting around, that the growing evidence that maybe, just maybe his methods weren't working fully even for him would sink into his skull and make him worry. I didn't sense his killing intent anymore, at least, and I thought I had managed to upset him. Not just make angry type of upset, but sadden. This kind of mental confrontation was not an easy one. If he was capable of making it, that is; that's the problem with some damaged individuals, they literately can't consider their actions and past mistakes in context and learn from them. The bigger problem was that he'd been rewarded too many times for breaking the rules, so to him it wasn't fully a mistake; he'd gotten away with it, after all. (2)

"I am."

At last, an answer. I deeply hoped this was not something I'd come to regret. "Excellent. I hope we are on the same page. You will stop hurting people in your experiments for sheer sadism or laziness in looking for alternative methods, and you will leave Konoha alone? I've been living there again, I'd like it to not get wrecked." I had never been one to pay much attention to superior and subordinate hierarchies, but I couldn't help but feel like I was acting as the boss here, in a strange twist of events, a total reversal of power from before. In a world where how much chakra you had meant everything, it seemed a bit funny.

No, he could kill me in an instant. Better to think of us as equals, with me simply having the upper hand for the moment. Anything else would be lethal.

"I am not fond of Konoha. I'd like to see those fools burn," he snarled, and I was taken back by his hate. "You should come with me, and not stay with such low-lives."

"I feel I am missing some context. I take it bridges are far too burned for you to ever return there."

"That much isss certain," he hissed. "They would kill me on sight."

"Was it just because of the research and my death?" I could pretend that was touching, if my death was involved.

"Partly. I was also up for Hokage, but they were foolish enough to reject me." Ah. I knew I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up that it would be anything involving sentiment.

"That sucks," I thought about rubbing it in how his own behavior had helped cost him the position, but, he had probably heard it before, unless his old Konoha friends were dunces. A little sympathy for the moment cost me nothing. "Still, I have a few things tied up there and people I am dealing with. I am happy enough to communicate with you and perhaps visit in the future, however limited my time for that may end up being."

"You are studying at the Academy?" he said with mild interest.

"I am. I've never had the chance to finish it before, so it should be amusing. It will get me properly acquainted with the basics."

"You should leave after that. Those weaklings will only be able to get you so far."

"I thank you for your concern and may consider it," I said with amusement, trying to decide if it was just selfishness motivating him to want me to abandon Konoha. Probably. I didn't expect him to radically change over night to an entirely different person, it would make me paranoid if he did, even if it would make me happy as the person acting as his therapist. "Do you have a preferred method of communication, or will we just leave our next meeting up to random chance?"

"I have a simple way." I tensed a little as he pulled out something, despite knowing he probably would not gut me with a weapon after all that talk. It was just a scroll. I stared at it curiously.

"It's a summon contract for snakes," he told me with a smirk. "When you master summoning, you can transmit a message to me through the snakes."

"I'm interested. Though I'll probably be too busy with other things for a few years."

I signed with blood and he vanished, the two of us officially parting ways again. I wasted a bit of time before coming back to my companions, knowing they were worried about me but also wanting to double check this time I wasn't being watched or followed, though at my level if he was extremely determined he probably could anyway.

.

.

I seriously considered heading straight back home after that admittedly disturbing encounter, but decided to ask my comrades. "I sensed a fairly powerful ninja pass by this way. Do you guys want to continue, or head back home?"

"Sounds dangerous. Did he recognize you under your disguise?"

"I don't think so." I had given my hair a brownish red tinge and my skin freckles and rosy red cheeks with makeup. "Still, do we want to take the risk? What do you guys think?"

"I vote we go! We're already a fair way from home and we're almost there. We should complete it, just to say we did, and then we can head straight back if you scaredy-cats want to!" Naruto yelled.

"If we're already in danger... I don't think an extra day will make much difference," Sakura said quietly.

"It could make all the difference between life and death. But we're certain to notice any pursuer over the water," Ino said, pursing her lips together.

"This is troublesome. At a minimum we should change our disguises around," said Shikamaru.

In the end, we voted to go forward after Hinata scanned and simply didn't find anything amiss. We took a boat ride to Wave on a clear, rare unfoggy day, which many of the kids enjoyed having never gone boat-riding before. I henged as an adult to avoid suspicion why a bunch of children were going around alone, something I'd done a few times during this little vacation, particularly at the inn to pay for rooms. It was nice living in a world that didn't care about ID or driver's licenses; made it much easier to travel.

It was a small and not very prosperous country of closely connected islands, very peaceful and out of the way. There was some talk of building a massive bridge, but nothing had been done quite yet. The weather was good this time of year.

We felt jubilant. We could officially say we'd sneaked our way all to another country, which, admittedly we never should have tried to do in the first place, but, we were determined to live it up before we got thoroughly punished. However, some of the kids were starting to get really homesick. It was about time to head back.

But first...

"We've been starting to have some trouble with Gato Corporation buying our businesses. I'm a little worried what might happen if this continues. With that much money, he could buy out all the transports. He hasn't bought many yet, but, those that refuse to sell to him have been rumored to... vanish mysteriously."

"You guys should really consider starting your own ninja village. You're really quite vulnerable," I told one stranger, a man called Tazuna, flatly.

"Hmm, you think so?"

"I know so. With so little money, there's nothing stopping someone from coming in here and messing the place up by force. Unless you get your own force."

He looked quite thoughtful. So did the children.

"Hey, if these people are in trouble, maybe we should help them!" Naruto exclaimed.

"I think you're right." I nodded my head. "Okay, I'd be willing to teach a few basic ninja techniques to your people, what about you guys?"

"Ah, that'd be fine. Individually we might not know all of it, but all of us put together should know the basic henge, substitution, and clone techniques, we could teach those!" Kiba looked excited at the prospect of being a teacher.

"This seems a little traitorous." Hinata frowned. "Are you sure we won't get in trouble?"

"I can't be bothered to teach anyone," Shikamaru said rather predictably. "I think it sounds like a drag. Aren't we supposed to head back by now?"

"Yeah," agreed Choji. "I miss the food at home." He was one of the ones suffering most deeply from homesickness.

"Ah, we'll help on one condition." I decided with amusement.

"What's that?"

"You have to name Naruto your first Hokage, even if it's only for a day."

"Whaaaat? AWESOME! I'm gonna be Hokage, believe it!" The blonde looked so joyous, it was like he'd fallen into an entire pool of ramen. Then he seemed to reconsider. "But I wanted to be Konoha's Hokage, not Wave's. Also, wouldn't it be Wave Kage rather than Hokage?"

"One step at a time, Naruto." I shrugged at him. "Well, will you take the deal?"

"I can't believe a bunch of children would have much to teach," he said quite dubiously.

"You're right, we don't, but it's better than nothing. You can fight off most bandits with this, and with time, maybe your people will develop their own secret techniques and come into their own." Pausing, I added. "I'd like it if you stayed on friendly terms with Konoha, personally, so make that two terms. You'd never be able to stand up to Konoha ninja with these three techniques anyway."

So, we taught them a bit, goofed around, saw the sights, got some free local cuisine, trinkets and fashion as gifts, Naruto got to officially Hokage for a day and happiest kid on earth ("I'm Hokage, believe it!"), and we headed home feeling pretty satisfied.

Until we ran smack into Kiba's mother and another ninja.

"Oh crap! We're all gonna die, it's my mom!" Kiba screamed the moment he recognized her, completely forgetting about pretending to maintain his disguise, running away with Akamaru, only to get pounced on and drooled on by a big black dog. I would have laughed at his expense, but I was too busy ducking and weaving away from the other ninja.

"We give, we give!" Hinata held up her hands pleading. "We were heading back home now anyway!"

"What a drag. I guess punishment is coming early." Shikamaru sighed.

Sakura shook. "Oh, my parents are going to be so pissed. Why did I let you guys talk me into this?"

"Talk nothing, you decided to follow on your own, didn't you?" Ino shouted, and things descended into infighting as children tried to stick the blame on other children. I felt embarrassed at the chaos.

"My opinion of you... is that you're all a bunch of brats," stated the unknown ANBU ninja who accompanied Kiba's mother. For whatever reason, he seemed to have it after me. I was perfectly willing to go, but I didn't like being grabbed much, and mischievously substituted other children into his grasp.

"Traitor!" they called me, and I just stuck my tongue at them childishly. Foolishly I let myself get caught up in that distraction however, and the next thing I knew, he had me. I looked at him without a trace of guilt. I wondered if I was going to be blamed as the main instigator of all this?

The answer was yes, yes I was.

.

* * *

.

(1)- In real life there is a fire katon technique called Hitsuke; the art of setting a fire to distract your opponent!

(2) – In the manga, his eventual rejection of Kabuto's methods (if I remember correctly, I never actually read that far, just picked it up from the fandom and Naruto wiki :P) is indicative he can learn from mistakes.

I have no idea how early on Shino received his bug pet minions. Let's just assume early.


	6. Kenneled

**Zombie Cat Science**

**Alt titles: Zombie Chakra Science or Black Cat Science.**

9**Kenneled**

Having no parents, Sasuke and Naruto ended up mainly getting yelled at by their teachers and by the Hokage.

Kakashi had to admit he had felt a twinge of interest when he had finally reached the trouble makers, who had made good time and speed as well as setting a misleading trail, a fake goal destination (if originally intended as the real goal), traps, and disguises. They'd made a serious mistake in breaking ranks and panicking the moment they spotted 'danger' in the form of Kiba's mother and her dog, but, otherwise his judgment was that they would potentially make very good ninja one day. It had taken a lot of team work to pull off this immense expedition, and he pointed this out to Sarutobi.

"All of those kids are quite something," he mused aloud.

"Good, because if they get through the Academy, I'm having you teach a team of them."

"The Uchiha and Uzumaki brats?" As the only other person here in the village with the Sharingan besides Sasuke, there were not many other options as perfect for that team as him.

"The same," the Hokage stated. "What's your opinion of them so far?"

"I honestly might not mind them on a scouting team right now, though they could stand to train in the Academy a bit more; if that had been actual combat they would not have held up well at all, although in this instance they did the correct thing by surrendering. The Uchiha boy was not what I was expecting; he seemed to have a sense of humor," That was contrary to what he'd heard previously, that the boy had totally lost his sense of humor after the incident. Perhaps hanging around Naruto had lightened him up a little. "Although he didn't seem to care about his comrades getting caught as much as I'd like, and originally wanted to set off alone, so I find myself wondering if it was all the Nara boy's work in getting the team to function."

"Do we know why they did this?"

"Ah, children will be children. This is a mischievous bunch, and I think once a couple started the rest wanted to go too just out of peer pressure."

"I meant the instigators."

"Well, you know Naruto better than I do. You speak with the boy, don't you?"

"I do. I believe he did it out of loneliness and insecurity, not wanting to be left behind. Besides his role in getting others to join in and helping evade a bit, he wasn't much of a planner behind this. No, from the accounts of all the children, Sasuke Uchiha was the clear leader who made the final decisions, and Shikamaru Nara played the adviser."

"I don't know why he did it. I suspect it wasn't his original plan, and he simply modified it into a fun outing when he realized he couldn't escape the other children. It isn't normal for a child to want to take off entirely on their own. Most would be overjoyed to have their friends come along." Kakashi mused.

"Indeed." The Kage smoked his pipe. "Well, why don't we ask him? Send in Sasuke."

The door opened, and Sasuke came in, a trace of uncertainty in his eyes. He had a fairly emotionless but calculatingly intelligent expression otherwise, a bit eerily reminiscent of Itachi. He soon looked straight at Kakashi with interest, like he was trying to peer straight through the mask.

"Sasuke, why did you run away?" the Hokage asked.

The boy stuck his hands in his new pockets. All the children were sporting new clothing they'd acquired over the trip. He'd still chosen to wear his characteristic shade of blue. "It was too quiet here." The admission was quiet itself, and a bit strange. But it was chillingly easy to guess what was meant. An empty compound full of old nightmares was not the most comforting place for a child. "I felt like I was going to suffocate if I didn't do something different."

"So it wasn't to chase after Itachi?"

The boy lowered his gaze to glare at the floor. "No. I might have if I had seen him."

"You'd have just abandoned your comrades there?" It was a bit of a strange term to use, friends would have been more appropriate, but it was hard not to think like a ninja when you were one.

The boy was a bit taken back, and gave pause. "Ah, I, I guess not."

"Don't do it again, Sasuke. You may be an Academy student now, but such actions in the future can get you branded a missing nin. You wouldn't like the consequences of that. It's much more severe than a mere scolding. As it is, I'm having you scrub Academy floors and walls with your fellow troublemakers."

"Yes sir." His face revealed nothing, his tone polite. It was difficult to tell if he was feeling resentful or relieved his punishment wasn't worse, or if he was simply apathetic. Then the smallest beginnings of a frown twitched on to his face. Not happy, at least. Good, he shouldn't be happy about a punishment, but this boy would have to be watched carefully. He wasn't showing himself the epitome of trustworthiness.

"You are relieved."

Sasuke bowed and quickly made his way out, clearly not eager to stay.

"Well, as terrifying as it was, it did seem the children had a great deal of fun. Somehow Naruto got himself dubbed Hokage of Wave for a day."

"Kids. Too cute at this age." Kakashi shook his head. "And too mischievous."

.

.

"Cha, if you don't mind if girls want to be fangirls... um, well, Sasuke, can we cuddle with you and hang out? You said we should get consent, so pleaaasseeee?"

Ino and Sakura ganged up me during my mandatory chores. I eyed them warily. "Well, err..." They gave me big puppy eyes and I blushed, deeply confused why they were showing this much interest in me. But maybe if I let them hang around with me, they'd see how boring and normal I am? Well, normal within bounds, I still could shoot fire out of my mouth. "Fine. But not too loud."

I half regretted it when they started fighting over me. "Yesss! Alright, I'm taking his right arm!" "No, I want his right arm!" I hoped they didn't end up suggesting I should be severed in half so they'd each get a portion like in the so called wisdom of Solomon. They might very well do that.

"Girls, _**gals**_. Don't ruin your friendship over me. No boy is worth that." Honestly. Stop. I'm not even interested. There was also a small twitch in my brain of 'eww, cooties', even though I knew it was completely irrational and childish to react that way, especially as I had been in a female body before and even had identified as one in one life time. Of course, I'd also sort of identified as male in another life time, so... it made it all rather strange. At this point I kind of preferred to think of myself as genderless.

"Eh? That's so sweet! Don't worry, this won't ruin our friendship!"

"Yeah, we like fighting, we're ninja!"

_Well, I guess this isn't so bad then, _I thought to myself, two girls snuggling up right next to me when I flopped down on the grass to rest a bit. _As long as it isn't causing any harm. This is actually rather nice and warm._

Although when they yelled at each other, it was kind of like punishment for being nice to them. Ughhhh. I caught Iruka staring at me and sent him a dirty glare, daring him to laugh at the Uchiha human sandwich trapped between two girls.

He laughed at me fearlessly. That man had nerve.

...alright, back to giving the cold shoulder it was. This was getting out of my comfort zone. Seriously. I had rather liked fan-girls in my first world; I'd loved fan fiction after all. I don't think I'd ever even consider marrying someone who wasn't a fan girl, if I ever wanted to marry. But... These kids felt like an author's poor understanding worked into a parody, rather like J.K Rowling seemed to think most fan fiction writing 'girls' were interested in a jerk like Draco Malfoy rather than often being grown adult women who had taken her poorly fleshed out character and created elaborate plots and dramas around him, or people (including gay men, who write fanfic too) seeking out expression that mainstream media would never give them. Romance for the sake of romance often wasn't very good, but as a subplot I could enjoy it even if I didn't ship the characters involved in any way, the same way I can watch movies about couples I personally find ugly but still root to get together. Some yaio fan fiction was surprisingly good, when, like my favorite straight fan fiction, it didn't take over the entire story.

On the other hand, some women really were taught to obsess over nothing but boys, and I'd had the exasperation of encountering a few on occasion, but that made so little sense in a world where girls trained to be ninja. I'd even had fan girls of sorts in my previous life, over the internet, although for the love of the gods I couldn't fathom why the hell they wanted to roleplay sex with me so much (on the flip side, I'd had one guy tell me he wanted to roleplay fighting with me because my fighting 'was like sex'. Really weird if flattering?) or why they asked me out with out ever having seen my face (on very rare occasions, but it had happened). My lack of fathoming being due to being ace, I suppose.

"You two know there is no such thing as love at first sight, right? Right?" I tried to tell them.

* * *

10**Imposter Insert**

* * *

Time passed and we kids all grew before the adults even knew what hit them.

I mastered summoning a few small snakes, but, distracted with training, only communicated infrequently, mostly checking on how the experiments were going. He told me he had some interesting ones on the side he'd like to show me one day, and assured that the main one he had in mind involved all volunteer humans. That was encouraging. Since I knew he had to be getting volunteers from somewhere, I poked him into revealing he was the leader of his own band of ninjas, and told him I was glad he got to be his own Hokage of sorts, since that was one of his dreams. Briefly, I wondered to myself if he wanted power or knowledge more.

He called me sentimental. Most likely, my unusual and dangerous pen pal meant it as an insult. I told him it was just me being a purring cat.

Sakura changed a bit, becoming more interested in strength training than before; I noticed her weight lifting on occasion, and she developed some nice muscles. Our relationship became a bit frostier, not that it was ever incredibly warm on my part: she made the mistake of trying to tell me orphans are selfish and that's why Naruto is annoying.

I was well ready to graduate early, but decided to stay on so I could go on the same time as some of the other students I'd gone on the adventure with. It seemed a shame if after that we didn't even get to be on a team together.

But one day, on the day of graduation, Naruto started acting... strangely. He woke up one day acting confused while I was making breakfast: "What am I doing in your house, teme?"

"You've been living here for years now dobe, hello? Is this a stupid prank?" I said, not feeling particularly humorous on that morning, especially as he'd gone straight back to the old insults. I wondered if maybe he was angry I was making my favorite food of rice balls instead of ramen. It was a little weird, because rice balls had never been my favorite food in my old life; at least part of me was clearly Sasuke. I had also never been quite so prone to spewing insults. I supposed that was Sasuke too. The grumpiness, though, wasn't too different from the old me.

"Ah, let's say it is, why am I living with you again?"

"Because you were lonely and I am an extremely merciful person who suffers your stupid jokes uncomplaining?" I raised an eyebrow at him. "Did I make you angry?"

"You called me dobe again. You think you're so much better than me."

"Okay, so you are angry at me," I said, baffled. Naruto usually wasn't the angry eternal grudge holding type. I wasn't feeling like a peacemaker, and he wasn't going to tell me what got him in this mood, so I stuck my tongue out. "Yes, I am totally better than you. You waste your time with idiotic jutsu like the Sexy No Jutsu, and I waste my time actually studying. If you want to change that or show me wrong, then prove it today at graduation."

"Ah, you'll see, I'll wipe the floor with you!" he stalked out the door, and I stared in shock. I had meant prove it by studying, not fighting. What had gotten into him? Why was he so aggressive today?

But it didn't stop there. He started getting just plain, well, spiteful and mean, to the point where I wondered if a nine tail fox demon was influencing him. When we met up with the rest of the class and he saw girls giggling, he said: "You fangirls are annoying, screechy monkeys! You could do so much better than him, the cold jerk, and your stalking makes you look like creepy pervert bitches." Okay, I had been kind of cold lately, but, they were the ones harassing me, not the other way around! And he didn't need to talk about the girls like that; they were my problem, _not_ his, and being mild annoyances to me didn't warrant verbal abuse. Well, okay, sometimes I lost my temper and snap at Naruto for being annoying, but mostly I tried to just poke fun at the flaws in his statements or be just as childish back at him. Speaking of him being childish at me, he turned and spat insult toward me: "Your hair looks like a duck's ass, duckbutt."

Wow, real mature. "Stop being such a dobe, you're embarrassing yourself," I hissed at him, trying to get him to take a hint for his own good. Seriously, this wasn't making him any friends here. I understood it sucked being a child and being fifty times more impulsive and emotions like boredom hitting you harder than as an adult, but, shut up Naruto.

It came to the point that, unusually, I was relieved when I thought he hadn't graduated because he couldn't clone. I didn't want to be on a team with him when he was acting like this...

.

.

Until, to my horror, he walked in with a grin, and we were assigned to the same damn team.

Naruto's prank was mildly malicious, although funny. He dumped pink glitter and glue on our sensei in a bucket, which surprised me; I'd thought for certain he wouldn't get hit by it.

"My first impression of you all... I hate you. Meet me on the roof." The silver haired masked ninja poofed away without even introducing himself.

We headed up there, sat down, and he asked us to introduce ourselves. Easy enough.

"It's traditional with a new jonin sensei to state your dreams, likes, hobbies, that sort of thing."

"I'm Sasuke Uchiha, twelve years old going on to twenty. I like science, my hobbies are science, I dislike bad psuedo-science and discrimination against women and the poor and really against anyone who can potentially do science. My dream is to be a fire breathing tiger." I said in an absolute monotone, trying to sound as droll as possible like I was incredibly bored to be here. Which I was. I managed to surprise everyone there.

"You don't** really** want to be a fire breathing tiger, do you Sasuke?" Sakura said, wide eyed. Unused to my humor, I guess she took it seriously.

Naruto looked a mixture of pissed and confused.

"No. My actual dream is to kill a certain person." If there was one thing I really wanted to do, I decided, it was to bring that sick bastard Itachi down. He'd killed little kids and old grandparents for no good damn reason. Not even for science. That pissed me off. Someone like that? They weren't going to be satisfied with one thing, they were going to go on to hurt other people. I wanted to stop him. Then, thinking about it a bit, I decided maybe, since I'd reincarnated into this life and though it hadn't been my intention ended up as the last of a powerful clan who many had depended on, I had some obligation here. "I suppose also to revive my clan."

"Ahh, and how you planning to do that? You gonna get yourself a harem?" Naruto was still being an ass.

"I was thinking cloning or resurrecting them from the dead might work," I said thoughtfully, taking it quite seriously and ignoring his stupidity. "I'm not sure which is easier, but with resurrection you open a big can of worms like, do you have an obligation to bring everyone who ever died ever back? It's a big pain. So probably I won't do that one. Now, cloning in theory is quite simple, in detail it gets really complicated."

"Or you could just get married," Sakura pointed out.

"That would probably be the logical thing to do," I admitted. "Easiest way, certainly."

"Nah, Sasuke's probably gay. He strikes me as totally effeminate, and that's why he doesn't look twice at girls!" Naruto took another immature dig at me.

"HE IS NOT GAY!" Sakura smacked Naruto in the head.

**_Homophobes_.** The both of them. Although maybe Sakura just couldn't bare to think of me being gay because that meant she'd have to turn herself into a man to have me. That made sense. It was certainly more comforting than she shouted I wasn't gay because I was too 'cool' and 'masculine' to be gay. Which is shit, by the way. Being feminine has nothing to do with being attracted to men. Any femme lesbian knows that. Plenty of masculine, sports loving men only go for other men.

That said, I had no idea if I was gay, bisexual, or none of that. It seemed that if I wasn't ace like last time, I was at the least a very late bloomer. Or maybe I just was not attracted to anyone around here and was very finicky. That was possible, they really weren't appealing to me. Cold blooded mindlessly loyal adults, and idealistic little kids? Yeah, no thank you, no one here I find even mildly interesting. I supposed I might be a gray ace or demisexual, meaning I'd only experience lust when I met someone I really found fascinating on a romantic level.

"Well, that was... interesting. Maybe a touch disturbing," our sensei said. He kills people for a living and he's calling me disturbing? Hypocrite. "Next?"

"What about you, sensei? We barely know anything about you."

"My name is Kakashi Hatake, I'm 28 years old, and my hobbies, I have lots of, likes and dislikes are none of your business. My dreams, I haven't really thought about them."

"So you don't have any dreams and you can't think of any hobbies, that's nice." I was feeling quite pithy today. He gave me a barely perceptible look, brows slightly knitted downward.

"We barely learned anything at all!" exclaimed Sakura. "Well, I guess I'm next. My name is Sakura Haruno, I'm - " She glanced at me. "a big fan of Sasuke! My hobby is... hanging out with Sasuke!" She giggled like she'd planned to say something else. Guh. Well, she was a bit more plain spoken than she used to be. Naruto made a move like he wanted to hit her for squealing and I was horrified. At him, not her. "My dream is to be a strong ninja." Well, that was something new, and quite nice. Maybe I'd had some affect on her then.

Naruto looked really surprised and taken back. "I guess you might be not completely useless, then."

"Hey! If anyone is useless, it's you, deadlast!" Sakura shouted. "And last, what I dislike... is Naruto!"

"You forgot your hobbies of clothes, training and camping," I added. She did have an existence beyond me, thankfully.

"Oh, yeah. Well, those too!"

"Next," Kakashi said, looking tired of the bickering. I didn't blame him.

"Alright, last but not least! Naruto Uzumaki, I like fighting, pranking, and training, my dislikes -" My heart stopped. What happened to his love of ramen?

"Ramen." I interrupted.

"Huh?"

"You forgot you love ramen." I said, concerned. "It's literately your favorite thing ever, isn't it?"

He seemed at a loss for a moment, as if baffled why I would care. "Maybe the old, idiotic me would have ranted about how much they love ramen and how their least favorite thing is waiting for ramen to cook, but this is the new me!" Alright, only Naruto would have known what his least favorite thing had been, so it had to still be him, right? I'd been getting worried. He was so out of character.

Like someone else had inserted their self into him.

"Now, where was I? Oh yes! I dislike a certain _dog_," he looked at Kakashi with zero subtlety, "fangirls -" he spoke, "Hey!" Sakura interrupted. "- and the current Hokage. My goal is to become as powerful as possible and show this village how messed up it really is."

Kakashi now glared at him as did the rest of us. "Excuse me? You love the Hokage! And the village! What's up with you?" I was near shouting now, standing up and towering over him, ready to throttle him for his weird behavior. "What's gotten into you lately? You've been acting completely unlike yourself."

"The old Naruto was a moron," he said coldly.

"The current Naruto is a moron!" I shouted. "The old Naruto at least had a heart! You're just plain vicious!" Sakura nodded her head in agreement with me.

"You're one to talk, duckbutt!"

"Woah, guys, take it easy now," Kakashi played mediator. "What's this all about, really? Friendship squabble? Did someone say something to you? Was it Mizuki who upset you?" Mizuki, the teacher? That must have been around graduation... the timing would fit pretty well.

"I've realized this village hates me," Naruto said, scowling.

I felt at a loss. "Not everyone hates you, Naruto, the Hokage being one of the ones who loves you. And you knew people hated you before but you never let it get you down! You wanted to be Hokage!" This sounded an awful lot like a small child throwing a temper tantrum, and I started to cool my anger. A little upset kid I could deal with, I suppose I should have expected him to blow up and get all upset some time, right? Just I would have thought it wouldn't be when he should be all happy and excited over graduation! Whatever Mizuki said must have been quite vicious. "What did Mizuki say to you? I'm sure it's not true, whatever bullshit it is."

"Enough of this nonsense." Naruto folded his arms. "I want the test, the real test."

"Real test?"

"Heh, that's right," Kakashi bobbed his head, eager to get on to something more suitable for his skills than childhood melodramas. "You still have yet to face the true test that decides whether or not I'll accept you as my students. And I must say, you lot? None of you seem ready to be ninja. This test has a 66% failure rate, and you look like fails to me."

"I'll prove you wrong," Naruto vowed.

"Tomorrow at 7'o sharp, training ground 7, don't be late. Oh, and don't eat breakfast, you'll just throw up." Kakashi then vanished in smoke.

"You should ignore what he said and eat breakfast. Oh, and come late," Naruto said. I stared at him distrustfully, and he smiled aggressively at me. Sakura looked at him uneasily, and he disappeared away in his own poof of smoke. I had mixed feelings. He had talked far too knowingly, but with him acting like a shit, I had no reason to trust any word he said.

"Let's just have a small meal that will digest quickly," I suggested to Sakura. "I had been planning on that anyway."

"Ah, okay, that sounds smart!" she giggled. I knew there was a brain under there, but, it was hard to believe it when she giggled... although, that was my own sexism speaking wasn't it? Giggling and intelligence had nothing to do with one another, there was no reason one couldn't giggle and be girly if they wanted to, it wouldn't destroy your brain cells.

I giggled with her just as an experiment, and she stared at me. "Ah, you can't giggle! You're a boy!"

I gave her a skeptical look. "Oh really?" Well, who was being sexist now?

"Yes, it's totally uncool!"

So. I finally had the secret weapon to get rid of my fan girls! I just had to giggle inanely at them and turn their own behavior right back at them! "Maybe I should do it all the time, then."

"Aww, Sasuke, you're so mean!" she exclaimed, realizing I was just planning on it to annoy her. Most twelve year old girls are actually pretty sweet under proper guidance, or at least the ones I remembered babysitting from my old life were, so I relented.

"Hey, boys are allowed to giggle if they want, okay? But I won't copycat giggle to mock you if that bothers you." I wish I could tell her I couldn't be in a relationship with her for at least, oh, another near decade at least, because I viewed her as a little girl I had to look after. Not to be insulting, or cruel, but just because I had actually been an adult if very briefly and had years more of experience and she really _was _a little girl. Although I did admit I didn't always act like an adult, my child brain acting impulsively from time to time even though I _should _know better, physically I could not actually help that until I grew some more.

"Thanks."

.

.

That morning, Kakashi watched, unbeknown to them, as they came on to the field. He noted Naruto setting traps with interest. _He has already assumed it will be a combat exercise. Not a bad assumption considering we're ninja, but, it's not going to help him much, heh._

_I'm concerned about his behavioral changes, but the other two actually seem to be getting along well. I'm a little surprised, boys Sasuke's age usually act like girls have cooties, especially girls who seem so obsessed with boys. He doesn't respond to her flirtations though, which is normal. Sasuke occasionally shows an unusual maturity, when he isn't making flat, terrible jokes. He says them so bluntly I'm not sure his team mates even realize he is joking. Got a bit of a mouth on him. Although what was that about cloning? A joke too? Although it was absurd, it seems quite likely some of his flat statements weren't jokes; according to the Academy he does like science._

_I don't think this team has a hope of passing. It seemed like Naruto and Sasuke were once friends, and the girl likes Sasuke, so they might have cooperated around Sasuke as the leader. But the girl hates Naruto and Naruto hates Sasuke, there's no bonds here, no way it's going to work out unless my pounding knocks sense into them. They don't seem mature enough to put differences aside for the sake of a mission, though I hope I'm wrong. Sometimes, most of the time, you don't get to pick your team and your mission. You have to do it, even if it's unpleasant to you._

_There's no cherry picking as a ninja._

"We're on time, it's been ten minutes, but he isn't here yet. Could the test be to go look for him?" Sasuke suggested, frowning.

"Oh, maybe!" Sakura said. "If we do go looking for him we should leave a note in case he arrives with us gone."

"Good idea."

Initiative. Kakashi liked that.

"I have some weak sensor ability, but it's nothing reliable, I'd have to be quite close. He wouldn't know about that anyway, so the test can't be relying on that. Maybe he left clues?" Interesting. A sensor was always useful.

"Oh, what if it's a genjutsu and this isn't the real training ground? Kai!" Sakura shouted, putting her hands together.

Now this was entertainment! Letting them get all worked up and paranoid about what the test was. Very funny. Naruto didn't seem the slightest bit flustered, though, and he seemed to have no desire to go join his team mates. It was almost like he already knew what the test was.

It didn't take too long for Sakura and Sasuke to get bored and wander off the grounds, looking about and scanning around for him. Kakashi watched them in amusement, safely hidden from a distance, though at one point he got a little too close, hiding on top of a building when he saw Sasuke straighten and turn to run straight in his direction. He quickly retreated, but this became a fun new game for him.

Taunt and tease the wanna-be genin.

He would slip just barely into what he deduced was Sasuke's sensor range, then slip out, watching the little kiddies scramble about frantically.

Ah, so cute. Well, he had his fill of this after awhile and appeared in the training grounds, patiently reading his book. When Naruto spotted him, he was bizarrely shocked. "Ack! You're early?"

"Early? So you've heard about my lateness, hmm?"

Sakura and Sasuke hurried over not much later, having been periodically checking back. "Ah, sensei you're finally here!"

"You're late," he said dispassionately.

"You were late too! Hypocrite. And we were on time, we just went looking for you!" said Sakura.

"Well, points for initiative if not for brains. You're meant to wait for a superior to give official orders," he scolded.

"So looking for you wasn't the test? Dang." Sakura folded her arms in disappointment.

"This will be a test of your skills as a ninja. I want you to come at me with the intent to kill, to retrieve these two bells. Anyone without a bell will be tied to a stump and not given any..." he mentally checked the time. "breakfast."

"I already had a big bad breakfast! I'm stuffed, haha!" Naruto taunted. "I refuse to fall for your stupid tricks!"

"Ooh, is that so? I'll enjoy making you throw up then," Kakashi grinned nastily, although they couldn't see it under his mask. He'd been planning on messing with them no matter what they did, eat breakfast or not. Paranoia was useful in a ninja.

"You'll try! Shadow Clone Jutsu!" A hundred Naruto suddenly popped into existence.

"The dogs with the biggest bark have the wimpiest bite," Kakashi dismissed him. "I also didn't say start." He quickly banished the shadow clones and thumped the real Naruto to the ground, who looked surprised.

"Sensei, you forgot a bell, there's three of us," Sakura said. Sasuke was quiet.

"No, I didn't forget."

"But that means one of us will fail for certain!"

"Correct. In fact, all three of you could fail. And if you fail... you'll be going straight back to the Academy! Now, begin!"

The kids all leaped away to hide. He knew where they all were despite their best efforts. Naruto seemed to be quite confident he wouldn't be caught, seeming more self assured than all of them. He decided to go after the little tantrum throwing brat first.

"Ready for pain?" He thrashed his cute little student to the ground. "First major skill of a ninja, taijutsu!"

"Ga! Impossible, I've trained with shadow clones and weights, how are you so fast?"

"Baka. Shadow clones can't increase your physical strength or speed; only training with your real body can do that! If you think a short period of training with weights can make your level match that of a jonin's, you're a fool!"

"Grr! Forbidden Double Suicide Explosion Jutsu!" Naruto sent his clones toward him doing what definitely appeared to be a forbidden, lethal jutsu. His cute little genin really was trying to kill him, hmm. How feisty.

He substituted himself with another clone, and watched in amusement as one clone exploded and took out the second clone. "Naah, you're a mean little fellow, aren't you? Still all bark, though." He pulled out his book, just to infuriate Naruto. The boy took the bait and ran at him punching wildly.

"Vomit Hurler no Jutsu!" Kakashi yelled, and spun and sloshed the boy around many times before dropping him to the ground queasy. It wasn't a real jutsu, but he thought he'd just found a new favorite tactic.

"I'll destroy your stupid book!" To his surprise, he felt the book getting yanked on. Chakra lines? He didn't know Naruto knew how to do that. This one was full of little surprises. The book flew right out of his hand, and he let it for a moment, just to see what Naruto would do. After all, it wasn't like he couldn't get another book. "Trade me the bells for the book!"

"Oh, no, anything but my book!" Kakashi exclaimed with fake horror. Naruto seemed to buy it as real though. Then Kakashi laughed. "Not a bad tactic, I'll admit, trying to make a trade. But it would help more if that was my real book."

"Huh?" Naruto blinked. Kakashi stabbed himself, and he and his shadow clone book disappeared. The real Kakashi would find this quite interesting.

.

.

I, Neko also these days called Sasuke, was having quite a fight with Kakashi. He seemed to blink like something had caught his attention, and I used that moment of distraction to try and touch a bell. No go.

I'd wanted to hide, hang back and watch him fight one of the others to gauge his strength and possible weaknesses, but he'd come at me pretty quickly.

This whole test seemed kind of screwy, but, we'd been taught to obey our teachers and accept screwy, unfair tests. Most school systems were like that. Arguing just got you in trouble. I was of the crowd that generally thought that if most students didn't get a question, it was often the fault of the teacher and study materials, not the students. Therefore, I thought of our teachers as being kind of shitty. The lateness rather reinforced that. They didn't want a lot of graduates to become ninja, they wanted to fuck with us and get a large minority to majority to leave. A rank wouldn't have as much prestige if a lot of people could get it, after all. This took it to new lows, though, bragging of how many failed and then deliberately making it so some would fail without fail with every test? What bullshit.

I was finding myself second guessing now, though. I'd assumed he'd be testing us by fighting deliberately at our appropriate level and seeing if we could match it, but he wasn't. He was holding back, sure, but only in the sense that he wasn't trying to kill us.

"Mm, your style reminds me of Shishui," he said, after I repeatedly vanished for the fifth time, flash-stepping and substituting like crazy to try and disorient him and get him at an unguarded angle, occasionally throwing fireballs at him. It was a style of fighting that came naturally to me, so if he recognized it maybe it was partially genetic. I also enjoyed the Uchiha interceptor taijutsu style, countering other people's moves and preventing them from pulling off their planned attack was exactly my sort of style.

"I don't remember him super well," I admitted. Like a lot of people, my memories of early childhood became less clear as time went on, with a few traumatic memories or especially happy moments staying crystal clear. Mine were mostly traumatic. "You knew other Uchiha?"

"I did," he said, not committing to any specific names. He took advantage of my distraction to knock me to the ground. "Ah, don't reminisce in the middle of a fight." Kakashi scolded like he had already decided to begin teaching. "Also, you need to work on your real speed and use less substitution. Substitution doesn't work as well in high tier combat, or against sensors, or anyone with a knack for prediction. Both it and flash-stepping make you waste time on a hand-sign you could be using on other jutsu."

I leaped away, backing off and deciding to go look for Sakura.

"Running away?" he quipped, appearing in front of me and aiming a kick.

"A tactical retreat," I countered.

Finally spotting her, I was disappointed she seemed to be crying at something unreal. "Sakura, snap out of the genjutsu! For crying out loud, I thought you were good at those." Okay, that might have been nicer. Eh, hopefully it didn't damage her self esteem too much and would just make her fight harder. I wasn't always good at spur of the moment socializing. Actually, I could be very terrible, especially in grumpy mornings. I hate mornings. Like this one.

"H-huh? Sasuke? You're alive?" It was like she couldn't see me.

"Of course I'm alive." Although Kakashi's next punch made it feel like I was going to die. Oww. He was continuing his flurry of attacks against me. I didn't have a lot more fire in me, only one big one and I wanted to save it.

"Kai!" She dispelled it. "Oh, I see you now! I feel so stupid."

"It's alright, theory is different from practice."

"Oh, what are you two jabbering together about?" Kakashi pretended like he couldn't hear perfectly. "Are you perhaps thinking of working together?" He stopped attacking for a second.

"Sakura, he's not defending at a genin level, except in restriction of lethal attacks, that means none of us alone can take him. We'll have to work together." I just ignored him. "Where's Naruto?"

"I don't know."

"Wait," I paused. "I have an idea actually, let me test it." I'd been keeping half an eye on sensei the whole time and the other eye on Sakura to speak to her, but now I turned toward him. He looked bored, even his mild curiosity looked bored.

I picked up a pair of pebbles. "Substitution!" I tried to switch them with the bells, but no luck. The exertion left me panting. "Ah, I guess they're too small for me. Weird." One would think bigger objects would be more difficult, but... maybe it was just objects different from yourself, and substituting things that weren't you was twice as hard as normal. Or perhaps because it was attached to Kakashi's belt and likely had some of his chakra mingling around it?

"Nice try. You're the first one to do so, so kudos."

Abruptly, there was a roar.

_What the hell was that?_

Out of the trees burst Naruto, looking like an absolute monster. He had a few tails of monstrous orange chakra waving behind him, glowing energy all around him, and even Kakashi looked a bit wigged out. "Well, that wasn't supposed to have happened." Or, actually, he sounded more embarrassed than frightened.

We were left in the dust as Kakashi and the fox tailed Naruto did furious battle, his raw energy knocking whole trees to the ground. He cast great gales of wind in an elemental jutsu of all things; I didn't even know he knew any, he certainly hadn't before. He struck at the ground and left great gashes like he had claws. This seemed to have enhanced his speed quite a bit, as Kakashi wasn't just playing around anymore.

Naruto... he was like an absolute demon. Fire jutsu, water jutsu, wind jutsu, where had he learned all of these all of a sudden? He actually managed to knock Kakashi down for a moment with a lucky blow, and the bells were knocked off.

He picked them up, tossed them at us, and gave a grin totally devoid of friendliness. "Hey, dumb-asses. This is a test of team work, right-o? Well, I give these bells to you two, so that covers the team work. We pass."

Kakashi pulled down his mask slightly, revealing his second eye, and...

The Sharingan? Wait, we weren't related, were we? No, he wouldn't have it in one eye, and if he was related, he'd have adopted me, right?

He seemed to look into Naruto's eyes, and the tails of chakra dissipated. The boy groaned, rubbing his forehead. "Hey, what gives?"

"You fail." His voice was quite cold.

"I'll destroy your book if you refuse to pass us!"

"I can buy a new one." Kakashi was unflappable. "Despite knowing the point of the exercise, you completely botched it. You completely ignored your team mates, even as they were considering working with you. I'm quite disappointed in you, but as it is, I have other concerns. According to everyone, you haven't been acting like yourself. I'm going to have you checked out by a specialist. If something has been affecting you, I might just give you a second chance if I'm feeling generous."

I felt deeply worried. What was wrong with Naruto? "This is just a guess, but, would that something be related to the Kyuubi?"

He gave me a surprised look. "Yes, possibly."

"Kyuubi?" Sakura seemed quite lost.

"Since you guessed it, Naruto is the container of the Kyuubi. This is a top ranked secret upon the pain of death, don't tell anyone," Kakashi ordered. "Now, fox boy, come with me." He grabbed Naruto and disappeared.

I sighed, feeling ashamed I hadn't seen the signs sooner. Although to be fair, I've never seen demonic possession before if that's what this is.

"So, want to go get shaved flavored ice?" Sakura asked.

I shrugged silently, but followed. If we were going back to the Academy, it wasn't like I had anything better to do. Although I couldn't help but feel this system needed serious reform, if one jerk could ruin it for everyone else...

Although, if this test was about team work, then it just proved what I knew all along. Tests aren't about what you know, but about your ability to read what your teacher wants to hear.

.

* * *

.

_end of chapter notes (light spoilers): Hmm, say did Anko get abandoned by Orochi before or after he left Konoha? Experimenting on students and losing nine of them seems kind of a no-no, but it was the other human experiments that got him caught and forced him to flee._

_Also, have you read some of the really terrible fanfics out there, like a God Kage fanfic that somehow got 200 reviews? I proudly admit I got inspiration from there... for my villain insert who takes over Naruto. He's kind of a gigantic spiteful dumb ass. In that fic he boldly admits he hates Hokages, his teacher, and that he's been talking to the Kyuubi, which should be well enough to get him into an interrogation room or locked away to be examined for a weakening seal! He also completely misunderstands the team work exercise._

_Although, this whole thing, it reeallyyy just makes me want to give up on reviews. I see people putting nice time and effort into fics and getting one tenth the attention that massive mary sue god!Naruto spite-fics do.  
_

_Although, you guys are super sweet! ;) Kinda makes me wish I hadn't prewritten a whole buncha chapters so I could respond to your requests more easily. Still, to those who dislike the Sasuke-inserting, I have a big reason for Neko being Sasuke for a long while at least: it means I don't have to knock anyone off any teams and can have interaction with Sakura and Naruto, plus it avoids redundancy of having two angsty 'family sucks' people who hang around Orochimaru. Neko won't be super avenger-y, they just don't have it in them, but the brooding over family? They were going to do that anyway, because, well, they've been neglected in several life times by this point. That really makes you uneasy around people._

_Also, you may have noticed I occasionally follow Kakashi's viewpoint. I find him interesting, even if I don't understand him as much as I'd like. I think he could potentially get along fairly well with Neko, and you'll see why next chapter-ish._

_ :P And good gods it is Spring and the weather is BOILING hot already._


	7. Orange Jerk

**Zombie Cat Science**

**Alt titles: Zombie Chakra Science or Black Cat Science.**

note:_ I'm feeling a little depressed. so I'm just gonna finish this up._

11**Jerk in orange armor**

Naruto went through another behavior change after that, but I didn't trust it. He seemed smiley, cheery, ramen loving, claimed the fox was making him off that one time by whispering in his ear and he was sorry, but...

There was something wrong with his eyes. They didn't look at me with any fondness, not even the fondness for a rival, any more. And he was still basically a jerk, though he'd toned it down. I was beginning to worry. This wasn't my Naruto. Could this be someone like me, only instead of reincarnating they'd stolen the life of someone already past babyhood, someone aware with dreams and ambitions and a life of their own?

I decided whoever it was, I hated them. But I needed more information, and I needed to figure out how to get them out. Unfortunately, I'd never fully figured out how to get rid of myself, (else I would have committed suicide long before the Sasuke coma incident) so getting rid of this imposter was going to be difficult to impossible at best. I could separate his soul, but what happened to Naruto's soul? Hopefully the boy was still in there, not lost forever.

If he had died and been replaced forever, I'd never forgive that imposter bastard.

.

.

Sakura was having a good day.

Naruto was mostly back to normal, maybe glaring daggers on occasion as Sasuke but boys were competitive, right? He'd done that on occasion back at the academy, it wasn't too strange. They'd had a chance to retake the test, something almost no one ever got. Show how good they were at working together. It ended up pretty good; Sasuke came out with a plan to have Naruto and Sakura grab him, then substitute Kakashi into his place. It worked out well, or more like Kakashi was going easy on them and let them have the chance to pull off the mischief in the first place, but then Kakashi pressured them to decide who would get the bells.

Sasuke had refused to take a bell first, then to her surprise Naruto. Not about to be shown up, Sakura refused to take a bell unless her team mates could also pass with her. Kakashi was so pleased at this, he passed them all.

So, she was skipping home happily when she felt an ominous presence. Turning around, she frowned to see Naruto. "Hey, what are you doing following me? That's rude you know!"

"Ahh, I know. But, remember how strong I got, so quickly? You could get that strong too."

"I can?" her ears perked with interest at this.

"I've always thought you had a lot of potential but had no confidence. That's why I pretended to crush on you, to make you feel good about yourself." He seemed to think he was being nice, but that was extremely cruel. Sakura felt quite hurt that he'd do something so low as to merely_ pretend_ to like her! Because she was, what, pathetic to him?

"Why are you saying such a hurtful thing?" She frowned and he mirrored her frown with his own, like he was completely lost why this would upset her.

"I'm willing to train you Sakura. But you have to be willing to let go of that annoying, pathetic fan girl." She remembered how he'd said he hated fan girls. She'd thought that was just the Kyuubi influencing him, because he'd never hated her before, but was it really all a lie the entire time? Had he always hated her? She bit her lip, not sure she liked this not so smooth talking Naruto.

"No, I like Sasuke and it isn't hurting anything. I can focus on my ninja mission and still like boys, **shannaro**!" she shouted. "I wouldn't mind training with you and learning some of those jutsu to impress him, though." At that, she gave a little squeal.

"I thought you might be like that," he said with disgust. "I hate your squealing so much. Now shut up!" He suddenly launched at her, and she tried to dodge, but he grabbed her face managed to slap something down on her tongue. Bleck!

...a seal?

"What the hell did you do, Naruto?" she hissed.

"It prevents you from making any noise I don't want you to, heh. I can finally shut up your annoying giggles!"

Sakura shivered. "Why are you so hateful?"

"I'm not hateful, Sakura, I'm doing this for your own good! You won't be able to speak of this to anyone else, either. But listen, I've got a good reason to hate duck-ass Sasuke, okay?"

"What could that possibly be?" she snapped.

"I'm from the future. He betrays all of us, the village, to leave and find bloody missing-nin Orochimaru the legendary snake sannin of all people! He becomes very powerful, a threat to us all, obsessed with his own power so he can kill his own brother, Itachi."

"His own brother? Why would he want to kill him?"

"Because Itachi killed his clan for power. Hypocritical, isn't it? He's pretty much doing the same thing Itachi did, looking for power and killing family!"

Sakura frowned, not sure if you could really blame someone for something they hadn't done yet. But if Sasuke really betrayed them... if he had hurt future-her and crushed her heart so carelessly...

Maybe he wasn't worth... hanging out with anymore. "Alright. I'll train with you. We'll just cooperate with Sasuke on missions so Kakashi-sensei doesn't get suspicious. He can't make us become friends. We'll become powerful without him, that'll show him for rejecting friendship and the power of lo-!"

"No power of love crap," he interrupted her. "No fan girl nonsense. That romantic stuff is for little girls, Sakura. Wouldn't you rather be powerful and impressive like me, instead of that dobe I used to be?"

"Um, I guess," she said hesitantly. It felt like she was abandoning a part of herself. No, like she was being forced to. It was one thing doing it on your own, but here he was making the choice for her. But she supposed with that damn seal she was powerless to do anything about it. Sakura sighed. "Okay, let's start training."

"Very good," the strange time-traveler who was and wasn't Naruto smirked.

.

.-.

.

We went on missions, and bizarrely, Sakura started giving me the cold shoulder too. She was much more subtle about it than Naruto, and they were both polite to me during missions. Their behavior was off, though. I didn't recognize it from before. Kakashi, who hadn't ever met them before I suppose, wouldn't have notice as much amiss as me, but he still noticed things. He tilted his head curiously when Naruto lost his temper after a large dog dragged him, but my smaller dogs behaved for me and I smirked at him. Naruto called me duck-butt and Sakura actually gave a smile when he insulted me.

"Sakura, are you angry at me?" I asked, eying her.

She flushed. "Well... I got tired of you being so cold and out for power! And I don't want to be a weak fan girl anymore, but a strong ninja!"

I felt only mildly (or so I told myself) hurt, but tried not to show it. "Fine. I admit I'm not the most talkative or warm. It's just who I am." If they didn't like it, then they could suit themselves. I had better things to do than hang out with them anyway, I was self sufficient, I'd gone years without anyone and I could go years again.

As for power, well, that was my choice. I was technically an adult of the village now, and that meant I was allowed to spend my time as I chose. Although they were certainly ones to talk; I knew they were running off and training without me.

Naruto said something profoundly stupid after the mission was over and Kakashi disappeared after dismissing us, though. "Sakura, you've been training, but I'm confused why your breasts haven't gotten any bigger, you sexy pink bitch."

"Why you!" she hit him angrily.

"Hey! I just meant all the best ninjas with the most chakra have bigger breasts!"

Sakura, if anything, got even more angry, and started trying to pummel him. He hit her back, knocking her down.

"Woah, hey, chill. Both of you." That was a little far, didn't they think?

"I'm not listening to you, emo duck ass," he insulted.

"If you really believe bigger breasts are correlated with better chakra, would you be willing to test that?" I smirked at him. "After all, one should not make a hypothesis unless one is willing to actually test it."

"Oh, really?" his eyes went wide at the thought of giving Sakura even bigger breasts. "Yeah!"

"Alright. Sakura, hold him down while I give Naruto a boob job."

"Yes!" Sakura shouted, and Naruto gave an undignified scream as I went after him to try and give him breasts.

"Oh, do be still. After all, men have the exact same tissues as women. Therefore, if bigger breasts give women super powers, they'll give men super powers too." I cackled evilly. He whimpered and squirmed – but in reality, all I did was hold up two oranges and try to tape them to his chest. I wasn't _that_ mean, after all. I had some understanding of the discomfort of feeling like your very body was wrong, of having a brain mismatched to your physical gender; I was very thankful this current body synced up correctly with this brain and didn't have any dysphoria, that it was content being male in shape and that said body was male. Not all my lives had been that lucky.

Such things were probably above this one's comprehension, though.

For a moment, me and Sakura were friends of sorts again, laughing and trying to tape oranges to Naruto. The next moment, we were somber, darting away as a wave of killing intent hit the air and Naruto glared at us, threatening pain. For my own safety I decided to abandon the joke.

The monster that had stolen Naruto was incapable of self deriding humor.

"Sorry Naruto," Sakura squeaked.

.

.

I tried talking to Orochimaru, writing on a scroll and putting it in a snake summon's mouth, letting him have a heads-up that there seemed to be more than one like me out there and that there was one aggressive to me in Konoha, possibly there were some in whatever location he was. I didn't know how I'd come to be like this, but it seemed like I wasn't the only one, and there was no reason to think they were all equally nice. A method had to be created to deal with such beings besides simply killing them, as they could pop up again, and possibly some of them might even know how to possess adult bodies. This was a serious threat to the entire shinobi world. I knew he didn't like the idea of inventing a method that could kill an immortal person, but I said we should start researching. Or in my case, thinking of tests, as I had a limited library.

He had made progress on his own immortality technique, finding that the body lasted longer if specially prepared first. I hesitated to know what exactly specially preparing the body meant, but asked if brain damage or altering the soul might have anything to do with that.

In a way, we had no real reason to trust each other, yet at the same time, we couldn't much avoid telling secrets. There was too much we needed to know and closing off the other would be losing a valuable source of insight and information. It was no wonder then we hoped to psychologically influence the other fully to our way of thinking; well, actually, in my case I would be satisfied with him just not being a total psychopath out to kill anyone who wasn't of use to him. I hope he personally was satisfied with the fact I had no reason to betray him and little to hurt him with, although I was a little worried he might want to kidnap me for a research subject and not let go of me, at least as long as I had the suicide option he would be unable to succeed at that.

It was possible, though, if he really invented a method to deal with immortal inserts, he'd be able to stop me from committing suicide (I wasn't sure if I wanted to at this time, what I was learning was too fascinating, but someday) and could experiment on me as much as he liked. It was a risk to take, talking to him like this. And yet, if I didn't talk to him, he might very well invent these methods on his own anyway and I'd be none the wiser at all.

Bah.

'_I am a little worried my possessed team mate might be out to kill me. It would be quite inconvenient.' _I had written.

He wrote back: '_Then kill them. I think you should kill both your team mates and your sensei, it would be a good learning experience for you. Or I could kill them for you if you like, I'd enjoy visiting Konoha again for a little nostalgic slaughter. And it would be pleasant to see how you've improved in person as well, Neko.'_

He was fucking demented. But I think he was attempting to be nice, in his own way, in this instance? Almost fatherly, in his own fucked up way. I tried not to read affection into it, since having anything more than an amused liking for him was just going to lead me into trouble down the road, I just knew it. For one, someone was rather likely to permanently put an end to him one day. He was just too mischievous for someone not to research how to seal him away or kill him, no matter what immortality technique he tried. I didn't think anything was foolproof, and it probably didn't help I was going to end up researching how to kill immortals; if anyone could figure out how to do it, it'd be us two. Although partly that was because we were the only ones working on it, to my knowledge. He had some helpers in that band of ninjas of his, but I had no idea how good at research they were.

'_I do think we should meet up at some point soon enough, they will have to give me a mission outside of the village soon I think. No, I'm not going to kill my team mates; I am a cat, not a snake. And please, no slaughter unless they enthusiastically consent for it. And not begging for their life hard enough does not count as consenting, by the way. Slaughtering someone who reincarnates would mean having to just track them down again anyway, if even possible.  
_

_I thought you were changing to be a less cannibalistic snake, hmm? Should I be worried?' _

His reply, surprisingly quickly this time for we were communicating more frequently now:

_'Ah, Neko~, I will always find refreshing the idea of a light snack. But I will resist, solely because you insist. As long as they are intelligent enough not to overly test my benign patience, of course.'_

Eh. The idea I was the sole person preventing him from going on a murdering spree was... kind of flattering and chilling at the same time? I decided there was no way I was going to agree to meet him close to Konoha. That was just asking way too much for disaster to happen. Provided I had a choice in the matter. He might decide to show up without asking me first, or letting me know ahead of time.

Sensei was very unenthusiastic on the training part, and he was always late. It was enough to _almost_ make me regret not taking Orochimaru on his offer, but putting yourself in the hands of a sadist wasn't a terribly good idea unless you had little other choice. Or were really, really bored. Same thing.

For amusement, I decided to track him down one day. He was just walking around, visiting a memorial stone, nothing special. I didn't say anything, and he didn't say anything to me, even though he was supposed to be at lessons right now. Instead, I just silently copy-catted him.

One time, I even showed up with a mask that covered the lower half of my face just like him. I couldn't tell for certain, but I thought his one visible eye took on an amused wrinkle at the edges. I had to admit I kind of liked the mask, it hid a lot of my mouth's expressions from people.

He'd sit on a bench, and I'd sit next to him, enjoying the sun, or even try to snooze. It wasn't bad company for someone as cat-like as me; the silence, the lack of conversation was nice. I never knew what he was thinking about all of this. Some days I didn't show up, doing my own training and researching. Soul jutsu, medicine, yin and yang energies, basic sealing, honing strength, weapons, ninja wire and target practice, there was a lot of things to go over and keep me occupied on my own. Occasionally, I'd catch Naruto and Sakura training together, but never said anything to them, even when Naruto hurled insults.

If they didn't want me there, that was absolutely fine. I thought Sakura seemed a little sad sometimes though.

...

Missions were dull, although I had some fun on a cat mission; I'd always had an affinity for cats. We chased after Tora. I henged myself into a cat, a feat of Chuunin level skill, and went after him. Naruto tried to get my code name to be Emo Duckbutt and Sakura's Sexy Bitch, thankfully Sensei rejected this.

For a moment, I fantasized about running away and living as a cat forever, but that was a little messed up, even for me. Cats often didn't get along well with other strange cats, so Tora pounced on me and we fought. I let him chase me straight into a trap, which my two team mates launched around Tora.

"Alright, we got him! Mission success! Evil little demon."

"Ah, not quite," I said, breaking henge and sticking my hand into the cage for Tora to sniff. "I don't think it's any wonder that he fights so hard when being captured and manhandled is so uncomfortable for him. He's been picked up by how many idiot genin, how many of which probably don't know basic things like never grab a cat by the tail? We should give him a little time to see nothing bad is happening, or even give him something pleasant, so he doesn't associate this with pain."

I couldn't tell them this, but I had a cat once who liked to escape. Chasing after him immediately just made him run more, because someone running at you is scary, but if I slowly came up to him and petted him for awhile before taking him back in, he learned not to run and became docile about getting picked up when he escaped. Being an animal, he hadn't the cognition to put together me being outside next to him for awhile with him getting put back in the house.

"You like animals, Sasuke?" Sakura asked with surprise.

"I do." Quieter than people, sometimes tamer too. I moved into the cage with Tora and just gave him my back, letting him hiss himself calmer, then petted the little demon for awhile without talking, looking directly at them, and without any sudden movements.

Naruto narrowed his eyes, like he was angry or suspicious at me for this action, or maybe he wanted to make a joke about me being caged where I belonged. But it was just petting a cat, nothing weird about that, right? I felt sorry for the kitty, when we had to give him back to his owner who smooshed him.

.

.~.

"I don't get it!" The Naruto imposter shouted angrily, later, to Sakura alone. "He never pet the cat before. Other little things, they don't add up, they didn't happen before. How could my actions have changed the time line this much? And living in his house, that hadn't happened before, did I end up in an alternate dimension?"

"Maybe it's like a pebble added to an already nearly overflowing pile on a cliffside that causes a rock slide? Maybe he's changed? I don't want to hurt Sasuke." Sakura said. Sweet, silly Sakura. When would the little fool grow?

"No. These things are minor. As long as his goal of killing Itachi remains the same, he's the same person. He's still the cold shoulder giving ass he always was." He mentally reviewed events, his memory a bit foggy. Ever since he came to this body, he wished he remembered things a bit better, but it had never seemed important enough to memorize it all before.

He could sharply remember coming to this body, the rush of memories that weren't his own, the feeling of being ostracized and left alone, but more, the feeling of absolute power. These people were absolute fools for alienating the holder of the Kyuubi, and the previous occupant a total fool for letting them use him so. He'd nearly leaped for joy once he'd realized what a massive opportunity he'd landed into.

It was actually true he'd time traveled. He'd floated as a detached soul for years, confusedly watching, then, as all the bijuu were gathered he'd seen his chance. After all the devastation killing nearly everyone, the old Naruto had decided to try and send a single soul back through time to try and change everything, back into his old body.

He'd simply leaped in to make sure it would be him, not that idiot Naruto. After all, he'd screwed this up the first time. He didn't deserve a second chance. Besides, why else was he here if not for an act of God? Clearly, he was meant for this.

And it was time to show his stuff! Wave mission time. He rubbed his knuckles in anticipation.

.

.~~~~~~~~~

.

"Old man! I'm a ninja now and I want a ninja mission!" Naruto-imposter was very good at sounding like Naruto. It was kind of creepy, honestly.

"Oh, you are now, hmm? Well, alright. As it is I have a C-mission to the Land of Waves," the Hokage spoke. We were in his office again after the cat mission; the daimyo's wife had given a nice bonus because the cat seemed happier and calmer than usual. At least until she started squishing it.

"Land of Waves?" I lost my slouch in my excitement. It would be nice to go back there again and see how it had changed.

"Ah, that's right, you miscreants ran off to there before, didn't you?" Kakashi mused. I eyed him, thinking about the dog-masked ANBU ninja who had grabbed and taken me and the other children back home. Hadn't Naruto called him a dog? Of course, that could just be his unsubtle way of calling him a bitch... that seemed like the new Naruto's style, frankly.

But their chakra felt similar. They could be the same person.

Naruto looked confused for half a second, like he didn't remember this at all. Weird, but not unexpected if it was not in fact Naruto.

"It was quite fun, if scary. I've never skipped school before or after, but, I remember thinking it was so cool to be kind of doing our own little self assigned mission with the other kids." Sakura said, smiling.

"It wasn't a mission, it was mischief," Kakashi corrected. "And your parents grounded you for months."

"Yeah, that part wasn't so much fun..." she said with embarrassment.

"Has it changed any?" Naruto asked, thoughtful.

"Why don't we ask the client? Send him in."

Old man Tazuna came in smelling like liquor. I can't say any of us were all that pleased by the grump. I wasn't surprised to learn there was no ninja village and that our silly childhood attempts hadn't been very successful.

It turned out the old man lied to us about it being a C-rank, though Naruto was not surprised. We met a ninja far above our level named Zabuza, so, I tried to do the intelligent thing.

I tried to bribe him.

"You're doing this for money, right? So what if I said there was more money in it for you if you let us all go?"

"Sasuke, what are you doing? You aren't the mission leader!" Sakura said. Of all times to be a rule bound goody two shoes, ugh...

"Yeah, we can't bribe the enemy, it's dishonorable." Naruto, hmm, odd that he would claim to have honor considering he stole a body.

"Shut up you two," I barked at them.

"Oh? Money for your sensei's and client's life? I'm listening, kiddo."

"Imagine having an entire country in your debt. A country that has just seized the assets of an immensely wealthy criminal. They would pay you incredibly well."

"Mm, sorry kid, tempting offer, but, no can do. I'd never get a high paying assassination assignment again if it was known I was dishonorable enough to abandon one in the middle for a higher bidder and turn on my own client."

"Tch. Alright." Well, that was a gigantic waste of time. "Don't say we didn't try to give you an out."

"Same to you."

Then the Naruto imposter of all people yanked me to the side and came up with a plan to defeat Zabuza. I decided it was worth a try. He henged as a shuriken, I tossed him and he distracted Zabuza into dropping the water prison with our Kakashi-sensei, the plan, well, it went pretty well.

Except for when a fake hunter nin came and stole Zabuza's supposed 'corpse' away. But the mission worked out pretty well after that.

Although...

I think Naruto-imposter tried to have me killed.

When that fake hunter nin Haku came after us, he was just concerned with beating his opponent to shreds, not with how much damage I took. I had to use a healing technique on myself, and it exhausted me more than it should have, or, well, being a high level technique maybe the better way to say it was exhausted me more than I liked. So exhausted I had to take a breather and drop back to let him fight with that cursed strange red energy he had.

He used weird techniques again with his multitude of shadow doppelgangers, and caught Haku in a real nasty double suicide explosion jutsu.

"Haku!" Zabuza shouted in grief and rage, running to his mangled apprentice or whatever it was that Haku was to him. Surrogate son? Haku was heavily burned.

The fight pretty much ended there, Gato arriving with thugs. Zabuza tore through them, and, while no one was paying attention, I bent down and healed Haku a little. I wasn't as good at it as I'd have liked, and I didn't exactly have a lot of experience on another person. I had more chakra in my body this time around, by an order of magnitude, so my control was not as naturally good as when I'd first tried healing palm.

"Why?" Haku breathed. "Your team mates, they are precious to you, are they not? I tried to hurt them."

"I'm not much of a killer," I said quietly. "Sometimes when you show people a little compassion, they stab you in the back. But other times, it gives them the chance to pick themselves up out of the hole they fell into out of no choice of their own. And I guess I'm in too much pain to notice if I get stabbed anymore," I laughed. My laughter probably seemed a little deranged. I sobered a bit. "But, your man Zabuza clearly cares about you. Talk to him about if this is really the path you want to take for the both of you."

Some people are so fucked up, so broken they can never be fixed. I am probably one of them in my wish to someday die. My true dream that I cannot tell anyone.

.

.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

.

12 **Cuddles with a grumpy kitten**

After that, things were back to their normal pattern, though we could now add C ranks to our roster of missions we could expect to do. Which was fantastic, because damn were D ranks getting boring. I understood their point: learn basic team work and mission protocols, and the concept of income for children who had never had any to spend before; but still, boring.

I tracked Kakashi down and sat on a bench next to lazy-always-late-Kakashi reading his book when he was supposed to be at the training grounds teaching us, like usual, when I drifted off to sleep. When I came to, I gave a small jerk when I realized I was leaning against Kakashi's side, head having slipped from its uncomfortable rest on the bench to against his arm and shoulder instead. I stopped breathing.

He didn't say anything, didn't do anything but flip another page. He must have realized I'd woken up, being a jonin.

As long as he didn't care this might be called cuddling, I didn't either, I supposed. I breathed again, relaxed, and went back to sleep. I had to admit to being a bit of a night owl, so a day time nap was not unwelcome.

The big blue sky sure was pretty and the sun's golden rays warm today, and the breeze and scent of trees ever so pleasant. Little bees buzzed and a praying mantis caught a fly on a leaf in the park. Every once in awhile, weapons clashing on training grounds further away could be heard, and a happy dog's bark.

I was content.

.

.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

.

After a time, some days of this, Kakashi broke the unspoken rule. He spoke. I gave him a grumpy glare for breaking our sacred silence and retreated slightly at the first sound of his voice, sitting up and away from him.

"Ah, your team mates don't like you much, do they?"

I shouldn't have felt anything, but I couldn't help a pinch of anger and scowled against my will. "Sakura is ambivalent, I think. But even if they hate me, it doesn't matter as long as we can put our differences aside for the mission and for the village. Don't worry, I don't think they'd abandon me to die in a ditch, not after the team work speech you gave." Actually, I kind of did. Not Sakura, but Naruto-imposter. I wasn't sure what to do about him, didn't think I could tell what I knew without causing scrutiny.

Waking up like this made me groggy, and I rubbed my eyes, so I missed his next expression as he spoke again. "But they have abandoned you," his voice was casual, oddly so for the subject. I stopped rubbing my eyes to look at him, and he continued on, "they train and eat together without you, do everything except the mission without you. That's not the work of good team mates."

"Well, you don't train with them either," I retorted, and it looked like I'd scored a small hit. "And don't tell me you're lost on the road of life, I've been sitting right here the whole time, I know what you're late for." Even if I never called him on it in front of my team mates.

"Do you?" there was dark amusement there, and I was a bit taken back, and wondered if perhaps there was something I didn't know here.

"Well, I don't know why, but I know what you're doing instead." I did note he spent an awful lot of time looking at that memorial stone in silence. It didn't take a genius to figure out that was mourning. Was this entire episode a kind of broken coping mechanism he'd developed? "Now, be nice and return to being my pillow, I was having a nice dream."

"Afraid not, my little genin." He ruffled my hair, and I tensed grumpily, having always been kind of skittish about other people touching me. "We're going to go train now."

I perked up a bit at that, and followed silently.

.

.~~~~~~~~~

.

Kakashi, of course, was not oblivious. He'd noticed his little genin following him, noticed too the way the boy had acted with the cat and had tried to bargain on the mission. Most ninja were not diplomats, and he hoped the boy had learned sometimes that sort of thing just wasted time that could be deadly, although he appreciated the impulse.

The cat, there was an unusual empathy there. People often project the way they themselves want to be treated, see their own motivations in other beings, and he noted this to be true for Sasuke, although the boy had done so completely unwittingly and seemed to have no clue Kakashi had seen this about him. As a test, he'd simply ignored Sasuke like Sasuke had ignored the cat, not even looking at him ('Can be perceived as threatening', Sasuke had said about the cat, but it was true for ninjas too) and just like the cat, Sasuke had eventually decreased the distance between them, at first sitting far apart on the bench and then as days went by sitting right next to him and even taking a snooze. He hadn't expected the other to lean against him, it had been accidental at first, but the boy had seemed to mostly relax at that point, as long as he didn't look at him or move. If he spoke, the boy moved like he was afraid Kakashi was going to bite him, and there was genuine fear in those eyes. Kids weren't supposed to be afraid of their sensei for just opening his mouth, unless they were about to receive a verbal rebuke.

It was kind of cute, if worrying. He could deal with a copy version of his old team, the old Kakashi. He didn't think he could deal with a copy of the newer Kakashi, the one who had already lost his team mates and was in mourning, even suicidal, grief; after all, he had never figured out how to deal with his own self, much less another one of him.

The skittishness, the lack of conversation, it really wasn't normal. But he was very similar, so he could not really complain. Even he talked more than Sasuke did, however, and he didn't look at people like he was afraid they were going to suddenly attack him for no reason either. There was something quite wrong with his kitten.

The team dynamics were horribly broken. He'd fought with his, but there had never been this level of ostracism or avoidance, which seemed to be somewhat mutual on both parties. To a degree, he understood it; to someone as loud and extraverted as Naruto, someone who liked you better when you were quiet and ignoring them was a complete contradiction, an incomprehensible being, an anathema. Sakura was more extraverted herself, and must have found someone powerful willing to interact and train her to be powerful too a lot more compelling. Most people would prefer someone who didn't ignore them, frankly.

Not even cats wanted to be ignored all the time, though, as Sasuke was no cat even if he wanted to pretend to be (he'd come to realize none of what he'd said had actually been a joke at his introduction, which made him wonder if he was going to start cloning people). This dynamic of baring the presence of the other team member or members as a burden to be suffered wasn't a healthy one. And it was up to him to put an end to it, or at least the outright ostracism, if he could.

"Sensei! You're here, and you're late again!" Sakura complained.

"Bah! Sasuke is following behind him again! How do they always arrive at the same time?" Naruto said with bafflement.

Sasuke just smirked. He could be a little shit sometimes, but, so could Kakashi. He wouldn't indulge their question seriously.

"We were lost and happened to bump into each other, then compared directions for an hour."

"Liar!" Sakura yelled. "And you, stop encouraging him!" She pointed at Sasuke, who gave an innocent look of: 'Who, me?'.

"Alright, guys. I know you've been training separately. From now on, I want you all to train together. It's difficult to do good team work if you don't hone your abilities together and get a sense of what the other can do." Kakashi picked out three pieces of paper. "This is chakra sensitive paper. It will help tell you your elemental affinity."

"Ahh, I already know that," said Naruto. "I am wind."

Sasuke suddenly looked unusually interested. "Really? Does it react to a specific minimum amount of chakra? Or to the same amount always in the same ways for people of the same affinites? Where can we get more of the paper? Is there a way to increase the sensitivity?"

Kakashi paused, unsure where he was going with this. "It's specially produced, I can get you more if you like, or you can order it. I would assume a minimum amount of chakra to get it to work, yes, it doesn't work for those with almost no chakra development as you have to send chakra into the paper. I don't know the details of its production."

"I want some." His team mates seemed surprised by this.

"What for, Sasuke?" Sakura asked.

"Do you remember my project from long ago about trying to deduce a number for how much chakra people or things have? With chakra sensitive material you could build a method that will work for anyone, maybe even a machine to automatically detect chakra for you. And, since it reacts to different types, maybe it could be honed to track different chakra signatures, although that would take immense time."

Kakashi was taken with astonishment. That was one of the most incredibly inventive things he'd ever heard out of the mouth of a genin, heck, out of anyone; admittedly one did have to take into account a lot of ninjas were more the 'I am going to train new ways to kill you' rather than 'I am going to build new things and ways to interact with the world' sort of fellows. "Automatic detection of chakra? Detecting chakra signatures without even needing to get a qualified experienced ninja? That would be revolutionary, Sasuke." In fact... "I think the Hokage would be interested in this, and happy to grant you funding for your project."

"The biggest help would be extra hands to go over data and run experiments, actually. Especially someone who specializes in making the paper and knows how it's done." Sasuke said quietly, gaze dropping away to stare at the forest instead of him. A little shy? Confused or overwhelmed by the attention? Feeling too superior to bother to look him in the eye? Bored?

"I am sure he'd grant that, if you're sure you know how to run the experiments."

"Really?" he seemed taken back and a bit nervous or suspicious. Both, really.

"Really. Prodigies aren't unheard of in the ninja world, your age shouldn't be a problem. I'll be sure to get you someplace quiet to work."

"Quiet is good," he said with relief.

"What just happened?" asked Sakura. "Is Sasuke going away for a project?" She frowned.

"No, no, no one is going away. It will be on the side." Kakashi made it clear that was an order. "We will all be training together. That includes you, Naruto, even if you think you know it all already it never hurts to re-cover the basics once in awhile."

Naruto pouted.

"I will be willing to teach you a new jutsu, however. All of you. If you already know a jutsu of your affinity, then I'll show you another jutsu or even have you try one of the wrong affinity so you can test and feel the difference."

"Sweet!" Sakura and Naruto said at once, high fiving. Kakashi was pleased they were happy about it. If there was one thing he liked most about the two of them, it was that they were easy enough to please and cheer up.

"You know, I've been thinking. It might be good to switch around with other teams once and awhile, train with them, since we'll be potentially working with them too one day." Sasuke said casually. However, it likely was not as casual as it seemed. Kakashi knew Sasuke had to be aware of the possibility other children on other teams his own age might get along better with him or his other team mates than his own team had gotten along. It wasn't a bad suggestion, honestly.

"I'll consider it."

"I don't suppose we could take solo missions once in awhile?" Sasuke asked more boldly.

"Absolutely not." Kakashi gave him a look. Sasuke didn't think he needed his team mates, not deep down. He remembered how even after figuring out the point of the exercise, he'd still tried one last ditch attempt to see if he could get it done alone. It was only to be expected from his psychological report, but Kakashi was worried. There were moments of cuteness, yes, but also, when he followed him unseen and unsensed, he noticed a destructiveness and obsessiveness in his self training. Not entirely a bad thing for a ninja, but, if Sasuke became entirely interested in power and knowledge, he could snap dangerously. With his interest in science, often hidden but occasionally displayed, could he even be another Orochimaru? The thought was rather horrifying. He was so quiet that it was hard to tell.

.

.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

.

The one who had inserted themselves into Naruto was quite confused. This time line was all wrong. Sasuke had never been this interested in science before, or gotten his own special project, certainly not to build a chakra sensor machine. Sensei hadn't started enthusiastically (Well, enthusiastically for Kakashi, which meant being slightly less late) training them, or teaching them all new techniques.

Well, as long as the chuunin exam was the same, he'd know what to do. Speaking of, he should be bumping into Gaara and his idiot scaredy cat siblings any time now.

Although, crud, he'd forgotten to agree to play ninja with Konohamaru, which started that little stand off, didn't it? Well, no matter: he'd spotted the sand siblings over by the entrance. He'd put thought into what he'd say to Gaara.

"Heyyy, you there, what's your name?" he asked, running up.

"Gaara of the Sand. What's it to you?" he glared.

"You and me, we're alike." Naruto-imposter grinned. "I'm F-" he almost introduced himself by his old name of Freddy. "Naruto Uzumaki, and I have a demon just like you."

"Is that so?" Gaara looked fascinated. "Then you too must know what it is like to want to prove your existence."

"I do! It's cruel, being so lonely and rejected, right?" Alright! Point scored!

"I will enjoy testing my existence against yours." Huh, what? No! "And snuffing out your life. For now, goodbye," Gaara intoned in that creepy voice of his. Freddy gave a frightened twitch at the killing aura surrounding him.

This guy... he was so totally fucked up. How had Naruto talked sense into him again? Ugh! Power of friendship or some such bullshit... after beating the crap out of him. Oh well, it looked like he'd just have to do that again! No problem! Freddy was the best!

As long as Kakashi sent him to the exams. He'd ask about that.

.

.~~~~

.

"My answer is no," Kakashi said dispassionately, reading his book. A careful observer would notice it was a different novel in the series this time. "I didn't recommend you all for the exams. Your team work is appalling and atrocious. Only a squad of three can enter, no lone wolves here."

"I agree with that assessment." Sasuke was reading a medical book today, and with his nose in it he looked like a little clone of his sensei. He seemed to take the news extremely apathetically, but that was expected at this point in his evaluation of him. He'd made some interesting progress in the little lab they'd set up for him, although at this point it was mostly preparation work it was still fairly fascinating: '_compare and experiment with different chakra paper production methods for sensitivity, evaluate mathematically the exact minimum chakra needed for different techniques using a single consistently produced paper chakra minimum as unit 1'._

That kid was going to go places. Just not the chuunin exams any time soon. He wondered if he was just thinking of his own team mates. Sasuke's own team work skills were not so fantastic, and he was prone to dark brooding moods where he was, frankly, quite rude to his team mates himself.

"No! Come on sensei, you know we can totally take it! We're strong enough, and we can work together well enough in a fight!" Naruto shouted angrily.

"Please sensei?" Sakura begged. Kakashi sighed, never having really been able to resist puppy eyes.

"Our team work has been getting better!" Naruto added.

Well, he supposed getting their butts kicked could be a good learning experience for them. "Well, alright," he relented. "if you really want to."

Sakura and Naruto turned to stare at Sasuke, pleading with him. "Don't you want to test yourself, become stronger?"

He didn't look too enthused. "That will happen on its own. But I suppose you are right. Let's kick ass," he said in a monotone.

"You're so dull, teme," Naruto muttered.

13 **Forest hunt**

The tests went just as Naruto-imposter Freddy remembered them, at first. He thought about intentionally failing out so Sasuke wouldn't get bitten, but decided that he'd grown really strong. Surely he could take on the sannin! Heck, they'd just have to get two of those scroll thingies and break protocol to summon an instructor. They'd understand!

Then the forest happened. He felt immediately wigged, seeing Sasuke exchange curious glances with the sound 'genin' with the freaky tongue. Had he done that before?

.

.~~~~~~.

.

Orochimaru. Couldn't say I'd expected him here, but I had wanted to meet. Couldn't talk to him in front of everyone, but I could give him a nod to catch his attention. Damn he was creepy with that long tongue of his. Couldn't he have been a little more subtle? How did no one see the connections to him with that? Ah well, I'd learn what he was up to soon enough.

We went through the gates, and I didn't worry too much about meeting up with him. He'd find me, and if he was feeling aggressively, he'd probably manage to kill us. Nothing to waste time worrying about. If he was friendly, then he could help out with my little problem.

"Hello... Sasuke." He sounded a little surprised. Ah, right, I'd been in disguise when we met earlier, yet the resemblance was still quite clear, as it had mostly just been a dye job.

Killing intent rippled through the air, paralyzing my team mates. I just felt annoyed and slightly wishful, knowing I couldn't really die; for me, killing intent was almost peaceful and calming. But then, I was suicidal. "Oy, don't kill my team mates. I won't forgive you."

"Is that so, kukuku?" he laughed. "Well, how about I give you a little gift?" He launched himself at me by extending his neck, teeth bared.

I moved out of the way, flash-stepping with smoke pluming behind. "Ah, not really interested in getting bit, thanks. Especially if I don't know exactly what the gift entails." He was being his own unique brand of 'friendly' today, I thought with a grimace. I spat a fire ball at him, mostly for show, as he dodged with ease as I deduced he would.

Then I sped away further, getting some distance so I could talk to him without my team mates over hearing.

"You like to run, don't you?" He – or she, it seemed like right now. For a moment I wasted time wondering if they were transgender. "Why did you run the previous time, Neko?"

"I had a child's body. I was irrationally afraid of being scolded by an adult, and dealt with it by avoidance." I shrugged. "That and getting frequently killed gets boring."

"I didn't kill you," Orochimaru pointed out, face rather expressionless. "I found you far too fascinating, my little Neko-kun."

"That body seems new," I remarked. "Did you steal one?" I said with disappointment. "Did you come here to steal Sasuke Uchiha's?" It made a dull, sad sense. Not here to meet me, but the Uchiha. What an unpleasant surprise that we should turn out to be the same, then.

"Neko," his tone turned placating. "Volunteers are short on hand, you see? I have to do it to survive. I haven't made as much progress on it as I'd like, even with the animals. I didn't know the Uchiha was you. Good snatch."

"Then you never should have done it in the first place," I snapped, getting angry, but mostly just frustrated. Selfish, stupid bastard. "And it wasn't intentional."

He paused, turning his head, and summoned a massive snake which he sent off into the woods. "Your team mates need a little distracting," he chuckled.

"We need to restrain the Kyuubi brat and examine his soul," I told him, getting to business. "And I mean it, I hadn't meant to live again. I'd been trying to kill myself with a soul technique and revive him from a sickness, but it didn't quite work. I ended up merging with him, my more developed set of memories and thought patterns taking over out of shock when Itachi did his business," I said coldly.

"Mm. I could kill you and take your body, if you like," he asked politely with thinly veiled selfishness and greed.

So, he did have a technique to 'kill' me, didn't he? That technique. Hmm. "I don't have any interest in having my soul slowly digested in your stomach, that's not the kind of oblivion I'm looking for. Besides, it feels rude to go so blatantly against the wishes of the Uchiha clan after they took care of me. They clearly didn't want that kind of fate for Sasuke's body. Sorry." Although, I didn't really blame him for being interested in the eyes. They were an awful, unfair cheat, weren't they? "Perhaps eventually I can work out something else, though. I'd like to replicate what the eyes do eventually. Or even clone them. It seems such a waste to have everyone hoarding techniques to themselves and only one clan that can access them all, or nearly all. Greater progress can be achieved with more people. Although knowing this world they'd probably just use the eyes to kill each other, a stupid waste of my generosity."

He first looked disappointed with my rejection, then as I continued looked a bit like a child for whom Christmas had come early, a broad, kind of creepy smile spreading across his face. "That would be most interesting."

"You didn't find any technique for just pulling a soul out of a body?" I said hopefully.

"One can make a bargain with the death god to do so, sacrificing your own soul to end up in his stomach." Orochimaru looked far too amused. "Somehow I don't think that's what you want either."

"It doesn't make any sense it would require a death god, though," I tilted my head. "You can voluntarily leave your body. That's how your body stealing technique works, right? So just have it done on someone else, but involuntarily."

"Sadly, it is not quite so simple as described, since that requires manipulating someone else's chakra, an impossibility," the sannin said, tongue flicking out to lick his lips once. "Perhaps a genjutsu to trick the user into performing a soul removal technique on themselves might work, however."

The snake pulled into the clearing. Unfortunately something seemed kind of wrong with it, as it grew more and more bloated.

It exploded into blood and guts.

_Oh, foul. _I shielded my face as a number of gross and slimy Narutos descended, blood and digestive acids soaking off of them. He smelled like bile.

Orochimaru was on him in a heartbeat, and I only barely followed along by using my sharingan as he launched a seal against his belly. "That should take care of the fox, hmm~?" He hummed far too happily.

I took a deep breath, and sat cross legged. "Alright, here it goes." I quickly ran through the hand signs.

"Sasuke, what are you doing? Are you going to save me?" Naruto said worriedly, giving a groan as he was pinned to the ground.

"Hopefully," or, something like that. Probably not exactly what he was expecting.

I sent my soul into him.

.

* * *

.~~~~~~~~~~~~~.

.

I stood in a massive sewer, a massive orange fox lashed its many tails angrily behind bars in front of me. "A damned Uchiha. I never cared for your cursed lot," the demon spoke. "Your dark chakra is far too much like Madara Uchiha's. More melancholy, however. I do so love that faint taste of despair."

"Answer me," I ordered, aiming the gaze of my cursed eyes right at him. "Where is the real Naruto? Do you know? Is he gone?"

"The brat?" Kyuubi's voice lost malice, becoming conflicted. "I'm not sure what happened. Something, someone foreign came here. I haven't seen him since."

"No," I said with horror. "He can't be gone and dead, can he?" What a shitty way for the boy to go.

"Nothing was removed. Only added," the Kyuubi reassured enigmatically. Oddly nice of him, actually, but I suppose if I had a choice between hosts I'd prefer the original Naruto too. "Will you get him back? The malice in this other one calls to me, makes me want to rip them to shreds." Legend told it the Kyuubi was attracted to malicious humans to destroy them. This request made sense in light of that.

I nodded. "Do you have any idea where I can find the host?"

Kyuubi simply looked down a dark tunnel. I could have sworn it wasn't there before. "Thank you." I bowed, and ran into the darkness without hesitation or looking back once.

"Polite enough, for a Uchiha," Kyuubi muttered behind me as a goodbye.

The darkness was all consuming, and I nearly choked on it. Such a metaphorical landscape, as opposed to something concrete, something scientific like neurons in a brain, it was an unpleasant enigma to me, but I would suffer through it.

"Come out you bastard! Dobe, dobe where are you?"

"Sa-Sasuke? Is that you?" a small, frightened but welcomingly familiar voice answered. Naruto! I ran toward it.

"It is! Tell me where you are!"

"I am the darkness. This is my head, Sasuke. I don't know what went wrong. I can't seem to get out of it. It's driving me crazy! I never thought I'd be so glad to see you. Am I hallucinating?"

"I should have known it would be empty, but this is a bit sad even for you." I stopped running, realizing I was talking to a disembodied voice. "Can't you make light?" I didn't know why it was _so easy _to be mean, but it was. Teenage hormones maybe. I'd been an incredibly cranky teen in my first life until I calmed down a bit.

"Ah, it is you!" Naruto's voice sounded overjoyed. "Only you would be such a jerk, teme." Abruptly, the darkness seemed to lighten a little. There was one direction the light seemed a bit brighter than in the other directions, so I headed that way. "But watch out!"

A fist smacked into the back of my 'head', if souls have heads, which, apparently they do. I gave a growl of pain and regained my balance to swing a leg out behind me, swooping the attacker off their feet on to the ground.

It was... someone I didn't recognize. A freckle fanced teen, bulky in stature and square jawed, with no Asian features, a Caucasian, unlike everyone else in this world I'd met so far.

"So, you came already in league with Orochimaru? You make me sicker than I thought, toying with everyone like that."

"Release Naruto. And I'm not_ in league _with him. He just thought it would be amusing to help instead of kill us." For some reason. Who knew what went on in his twisted mind.

"Why, so you can kill him yourself in a few years for an improved Sharingan?" What? I was completely at a loss. That had never been in my plans. "After all, only a great trauma like losing your best friend can unlock the Mango or whatever the bullshit it's called, to make you a match for Itachi."

"Why are you doing this?" I was at a loss.

"Because this world is screwed up, and I can make it better!" He jabbed a finger at the darkness, where a faint figure started to manifest, bound and roped up. I ran for it in hope. "This fool can't be trusted with it, he doesn't deserve it and this power! He'll just lick the boots of this horrid village, letting everyone politically manipulate him."

He... had a bit of a point on the last part. But he was wrong. "Naruto has a kind heart. I can think of few to none I'd prefer to have the power of the Kyuubi, few who could better bare the curse of having a monster inside them and still keep a sane and unspiteful mind." I glared at him. "You are not one of them!"

"No! I'm never giving up this body! I don't want to die again!" the insert screamed, and charged at me, rope appearing in his hands. "I'll just have to bind you too!"

No. I shivered at the thought of being stuck here in the darkness. I dodged and danced away, glad that my sharingan still seemed to work here, trying to reach the Naruto silhouette in the distance. The imposter seemed to somehow manifest a weapon, a great sword appearing in his hand. How the heck was he doing that? I tried to imagine one in my hands, but, nothing.

"Naruto, can you get me a weapon?"

"I'm sorry! He's in control right now!"

I didn't waste time on sighs. I made a grab for the shadow figure bound and gagged, only for it to dissipate away and a sword nearly to cleave my neck from my body. With frustration, I ran back toward the direction of the tunnel, letting him chase me into the sewers.

"Ah, you want to die in the filth, is that right? Ay, Kyuubi, how about you lend me some of your power?"

"I'd rather not," the fox huffed. "Unless to keep this body from dying."

I stood right next to the bars, wary and aware the fox might try to attack me through it. It was a risk.

"Nice spot to choose to die, aye?" The Naruto-insert laughed at me. He swung, and I side stepped. The blade went through the bars, and I held him down there, pushing him from the back against the bars.

"Kyuubi, if you please?" I asked, looking up the fox, who looked delighted and intrigued. He slammed his paw down as the young man tried to jerk the sword and himself away from my grip, and I pushed his head in, trying to get his whole soul to go.

"Aiihhha! I give, I give!" he screamed.

The fox laughed darkly, voice reverberating off the walls, before launching down and slamming his jaws around the bastard, dragging him in and then tossing him up in the air like a grape to fall in his mouth. The fox slurped the bloodied corpse whole down his throat.

"Mmm, haven't had a meal like that in ages. Thank you. But my host is still tied up," he reminded me.

I gave a short bow in thanks and and ran down the tunnel again. This time, it rapidly grew lighter, to a sunny, grassy field, more like the mind I expected Naruto to have. The boy was blinking dazedly at the sun, ropes tied around him. "Sasuke? You did it?"

"I did." I frowned, thinking of the person I 'killed' even if they were dead, (or were they? Ghostly souls were confusing) and untied him, then stepped back and closed my eyes. Everything went black.

.

.

I woke back up in his body, able to control his limbs, and so did he wake up, giving our body a confused jerk. I quickly left, surging back to my unconscious body. To my displeasure and discomfort, Orochimaru was leaning over me next to a knocked out Sakura. "It went well, I trust?" he hissed.

"It did. The other one is gone. I got the fox to devour him." I stretched, it feeling good to be back. "Sad way to go, but can't say I was upset about it."

"Perhaps one day you will stop being sentimental, Neko. You should leave this sappy place and come with me," he enticed me for the fiftieth time.

"I don't think so," I told him with amusement. "And maybe you should try being sappy. It can be fun, in limited amounts." Yes, I was teasing a man who could rip me limb from limb and would have no compunctions, mercy, or remorse. I was insane, just not the psychotic variety.

Naruto groaned. "Who are you talking to? This guy feels super strong... wait, some of the other guy's memories are coming back now... Gah! Crazy snake freak! You tried to kill me!" He popped upright and prepared to fight, despite having been out of commission for months with another person taking a joyride with his body.

"Perhaps I should finish the job," the crazy snake sannin laughed, and I gave him an exasperated look. Great, he'd decided to prioritize 'fun' over not killing my team mates.

In a whirl, I grabbed my two team mates and used jutsu to move like crazy out of there.

"Saaaasuke. Trying to run away again? You truly are no fun."

I set up rapidly a series of wires and seals to tangle and trip him up and even explode on him. Naruto squirmed loose of my grip, complaining "Hey, I can take care of myself! I can run!" He spammed shadow clones. "But uh, what was with the weird creepy guy in my head, do you know?"

I decided for the technically true but idiotic sounding answer he'd swallow easily. "A ghost."

"Waaa, really? A ghost was possessing me, that's so creepy Sasuke!" And he bought it, hook, line and sinker. It was actually true though, so, meh, maybe I should think more nicely of my team mate... nah, too much fun poking fun at him. He could take it.

Another snake, and Naruto did something weird. He deliberately sent a bunch of clones in to get swallowed, trying to bloat the snake's stomach again. Yuuck.

Sakura moaned, waking slowly, and I put her down. She blinked away. "Ah, Sasuke, you're okay! And Naruto! Did we lose the creep yet?"

"No, I'm afraid not." A large explosion went off.

"Wait, I got an idea," Naruto said. "Or my ghost did."

"Ghost?" Sakura said cluelessly, having missed our conversation.

"Yaaa!" Naruto sent out a massive chakra pulse. "I tried to give out, like, an alert signal, but I don't know if it worked. They might just think it was a jutsu, you know?"

"We can use it as a bluff," Sakura immediately noted. "CHA! Snake face! We just called for ANBU! You better run!"

"Oh really?" Orochimaru appeared in front of us, eerily fast. "Well, one last parting gift then." He extended his head and fangs and shot out at me, startling me. I thought he'd been done with that biting me nonsense! I narrowly got away, brushing him, heavily annoyed. _Consent, you don't have consent! Asshole. I don't know why I put up with you._

He looked, if anything, just amused when my team mates chopped his body in half while his neck was extended. His head rolled and spat out a new body, as he could apparently get even creepier. I felt, and with my sharingan saw immense chakra in that jutsu; it was impressive, but he surely couldn't keep it up perpetually. He had just used it to show off and frighten us. Or possibly send a message to our superiors who we would report to of his power, and frighten them. Or both.

"Well, it's been fun, but I have no desire to face ANBU today. Adieu," he bid goodbye and disappeared away, leaving us wounded but not nearly as badly off as we would have been if he hadn't just been toying around with us.

.

.-.

.

Our sensei was furious. Mostly at me. There was another angry person at the tower too, the proctor, Anko.

"Did he bite you?" she demanded.

"Why?" I asked curiously.

"Because he did the same damn thing to me. I was his student and he marked me with his curse," she said with pain in her voice. I felt a little guilty.

"No, he didn't manage to bite me. He tried to, but my team mates helped me. He seemed to enjoy toying with us."

"And I was possessed by a ghost, but Sasuke saved me!" Naruto shouted.

Everyone stared at him like he was an idiot. He wasn't being stupid, just loud and less than helpful in his descriptions, but, I understood the impulse. I felt uneasy about what going into detail would reveal, though.

"I beg your pardon, Naruto?" Kakashi stared at him in complete loss.

"That's actually correct. Naruto was possessed for the last several months. By a ghost." I said in a dry voice with only slight inflection on the last words, which for some reason made everyone take me as more serious and intelligent than the person shouting. Prejudice, am I right? Well, okay, not really. "It was responsible for his behavioral changes. He should be back to normal now. I used my sharingan and ousted it from his body." Sort of.

"In the middle of battle?" Kakashi said dubiously.

"Ah! That's right, I remember you talking to that Snake freak!" Naruto said, to my embarrassment. Well, the cat was out of the bag it seemed. "He wanted you to leave with him."

"That's right." I took a deep breath. "For whatever reason, Orochimaru seems to have some interest in me." I almost said 'some fondness'. "We talked, figured out what the problem was, and he agreed to aid me with the ghost. He seemed to find it fascinating, two souls in one body." And was polite enough for some reason not to bite me while unconscious, which, hey, thanks for pretending to resemble a normal human for five seconds. "He put some kind of seal on Naruto to dampen his chakra so he couldn't kill me with the fox. Sorry about that, Naruto. I'm sure you can get it removed."

"Sasuke, I'm ashamed of you. Orochimaru is very dangerous. I can't believe you trusted him not to kill you or double-cross you while you dealt with this ghost, and that you didn't tell me about it. I could have helped you." Well, it did sound incredibly stupid when he put it like that. "But I profess I'm confused. How, exactly, in the middle of a battle did you manage to talk politely enough to get around to the unrelated issue of Naruto's ghost problem?"

"I told you. I fascinate him. You might even say he likes me. He enjoyed talking to me." And I him, but I couldn't say that without getting taken to a shrink. Or an interrogator, actually rather more likely. "I told him his method of immortality was seriously flawed. He laughed. We chatted over science." I couldn't resist my own chuckle, despite knowing how much trouble I was in. I quickly stifled it.

Kakashi looked seriously disturbed. I suppose I should have been disturbed too, if I could muster up the ability to care that much. "Listen Sasuke. People Orochimaru take a liking to? End up dead, or puppets to his will and his will alone."

"Yeah, don't talk to that jerk!" Sakura said. "He gave me the creeps."

Anko butted in. "Yeah, kid, the mark he gave me is the least of the troubles he could visit on you, believe me. Who knows what else he's up to?"

"I asked him to leave Konoha alone. He hasn't hurt anyone here this time I think, so far. If he stays on good behavior hoping to tempt me over, that's a good thing, right?" I shrugged, then, feeling sorry for their worried faces, attempted to comfort them softly: "It's alright. I don't care what happens to me."

That seemed to have the opposite affect of what I'd been hoping for. They looked hurt, not happy, my whole team was frowning and Kakashi looked like someone had punched him in the gut. "How did Sasuke react to the killing intent, Sakura?" he asked, out of the blue.

"Oh, not at all, sensei. It was really pretty cool! He didn't even blink."

"A genin of your level shouldn't react like that," Kakashi was trembling, and his voice was off. I stared at him uncertainly. "You fool. You total fool."

"I'm sorry, sensei?" I tried to muster some emotion, to hide how pained and dull I felt, how on the verge of apathetic. I managed to feel some concern over him, not wanting him to be upset, and that instinctive childish desire not to upset adults.

"You're completely suicidal," he announced. His conclusion wasn't even stated as a question, but an absolute fact. "Only the suicidal are so incredibly immune to killing intent that they don't even have to train or experience it a single time to overcome it in an instant, although some react by committing suicide on the spot. I should have seen it before, when you had no reaction to Zabuza. It is not a good thing, it is _not_ something to brag about."

I stood mutely, finding this unexpected but unable to feel the normal rush that comes with shock. I couldn't very well say yes, but I couldn't say no, either, not without lying. Realizing I was pretty much admitting it with my silence, I added: "I always did think Itachi should have killed me as well." Did that make me completely suicidal? I'd thought I'd been dealing with it better lately. Or maybe that was because I literately couldn't kill myself and had to find other methods of coping.

He took a ragged breath, then, to my shock, wrapped me in a hug. Then Sakura and Naruto joined in, their little hands wrapping around me and giving me no room to squirm out of it. I just stiffened, confused.

Out of the corner of my eye, Anko shook her head with disappointment and left the room.

Slowly, when it became clear they weren't letting go, I hugged back rather reluctantly, at a loss at what they were doing.

"I'm not letting go of another team mate, I swear," Kakashi's voice came above my ear, heavy, grief-stricken.

_But, _I thought, _aren't I already lost?_


	8. Lost Kitty, The End

**Zombie Cat Science**

**Alt titles: Zombie Chakra Science or Black Cat Science.**

14 **Lost Kitty**

We had made it through the second stage of the Chuunin exams. Kakashi wanted to pull me out, but I refused, not really fully understanding why he was so upset anyway. I had never been a warm or fuzzy team mate, what could possibly be so interesting that he would have such fondness for me? Although I did admit it was nice to sit together. Perhaps it was the simple desire to help another human being that motivated them; I knew that desire to help myself.

"You really don't have to worry about me suddenly being dead one morning, if that scares you. I would fulfill any obligations I have first before killing myself," I tried to comfort them again, but again it didn't work too well. Kakashi shook his head and put a palm to his face, looking tired, muttering 'Itachi' under his breath barely audible to the ear.

"Sasuke, do shut up," Sakura said in exasperation. "Although I do have to thank you for getting rid of that ghost. It was a bastard to me, and now I'm free of it."

"It tried to possess you too, Sakura?" Naruto's brows knit together in confusion over how it could possess two bodies at once. It confused me too.

"No, it put a bloody seal on me to 'stop me screeching and giggling' and saying anything it didn't like! I hated it! I just realized, it's dead so I'm free now." Her eyes were wet and she was nearly crying. "But it told me something really weird, too. It said it was from the future?"

"The future?" Naruto asked what I wanted to, beating me to the punch.

"That sounds rather impossible," Kakashi said slowly.

"That's right. He said that one day, Sasuke will betray the village for Orochimaru for power to kill Itachi. That's why he hated Sasuke."

He... had a reason for hating me? I frowned. "Betray the village how?"

"Leave it."

Wha... okay, that was a very mild betrayal. Although maybe if he had lots of secrets to spill.

"Ah, that ghost was totally lying! Orochimaru asked him to leave and he said no! Sasuke would totally never betray the village! Right Sasuke?"

It kind of sounded like something I'd do, actually. It wasn't like I hadn't taken off before. I didn't really wholly approve of the village's attitude that if you were born here of clan blood or trained here you belonged for life, the indoctrination that said choosing where you wanted to live was the same as death-worthy betrayal.

"I wouldn't betray the village," I said honestly, but, I had a very different mental vision of betrayal than they did and omitted that little detail.

"He also said some other things that disturbed me, just the other day he said that there was some kind of Akatsuki organization after Naruto and all the bijuu, to create a ten tailed beast."

"Sakura, this is very important. I want you to tell the Hokage all of this."

"That's all I can think of, though. Except, ah, one thing." Sakura took in a sharp breath. "I don't know how to break this. It concerns your clan."

I went rigid, and was surprised how little rage came, though there was some. I'd become so placid, so calm with the exception of a few grumpy sniping words at my team mates; it made me feel unnervingly like a little Itachi clone, all I needed to do was poke someone in the bloody damned forehead. But Itachi would always be at least a slightly sore spot, wouldn't he?

The rage festered and built itself bigger.

"Itachi -" she began.

"Sakura," said Kakashi abruptly. "Come with me. Sasuke is in a sensitive mood, and this is a sensitive subject. I want to hear it first, especially if it's untrue. You can't trust anything that 'ghost' says."

"I want to know!" I demanded, that anger beginning to grow and twitch me to life. Sometimes it made me feel like a whole different personality, an avenger. But I was an avenger, wasn't I? I was going to make him gone.

They left without me. I had to know. I needed to know, a weird desperation. What did they know about my brother?

And didn't that word send up a whole host of confused, angry, mournful and vivid as the day I received them memories that should not have been so damned _happy_. I hated him for making me smile. For saying he cared, and yanking the rug. I felt sick, and weak, and a fool for trusting. Trusting anyone.

Because they all had something they'd hurt me over. Be it the village, or their damned desire for power, or for not being the happy go lucky dog who was the 'bestest' friend they wanted me to be. But the pain, I don't know how, or why, but abruptly, it had shaken me from my apathy. I was alive. I needed to live, to breath. To wretch and puke. To yell in rage.

Because I was _alive_ in my memory, giving one of the only screams I'd ever given in my entire life, watching family die at Itachi's hands, and that memory suddenly felt painfully real, like I was a ghost awake upon the earth again.

I felt more like Sasuke,_ old _Sasuke. The one who never had the patience for science, or seen the point of it beyond getting basic goods to the table and building the house and repairing the roof above your head.

So, the future said I left the village, huh?

Maybe I should oblige it. Damn me if I knew how the little bastard time traveled when he couldn't even hold his own in a fight, though. Perhaps I should make sure his other information was really true. Although I couldn't do that if they wouldn't tell me it! What had she been going to say? That Itachi was going to kill me and steal my eyes? That he dies by my hands? That he was framed? A different ghost took over his body? Ugh. I wanted to hit my head against a wall.

But I could do something better and more productive. I quickly secluded myself and began to write a correspondence.

'_Hey, what was with the trying to bite me? And you seemed like you were going to kill my team mate, and you stole yourself another body, __**and**__ you went after the Uchiha to, what, steal another body? I'm not exactly super pleased with you right now. If you were dying and desperate, you might have contacted me instead of immediately going to the last sick resort. I would have been interested at least for the intellectual stimulation alone._

_Unlike you, who derive most pleasure from intellectual pursuits and power, I can also get satisfaction from helping and cooperation. I suppose that reads to you as 'satisfaction from being used by another person', but, no, it's like red and blue and ultraviolet. Bees see ultraviolet, humans don't. Another example: Cats like chasing string, humans don't. Perhaps you remember what it was like having your parents love you?_

_Are you capable of admitting mistakes? I don't mean that as an attack, but curiosity. Are we done here?_

_One last favor, if you have not burned this already. What do you know of the Akatsuki?'_

It was a long time, weeks, waiting for a response. It was rather angry:

'_Believe it or not Neko, but I am not ignorant. Perhaps you believe me some kind of psychopath; I know I have been called that often enough. Let me put your anxiety to rest: I am far more rational than one of those brain damaged two faced creatures._

_I am well aware what fondness is, that most humans have a drive to cooperate. I simply have deliberately cast off mine, because grief and the pain of idiocy is not worth my time when I can find gratification and satisfaction in other things. I distrust most human 'love' for I find it to be incredibly superficial, often only based upon the mutual gratification of human cooperative needs, and ends the moment the other cannot gratify their needs. I like you, Neko, in as much as I like anyone, rather like one might 'like' a color or book; a rather insignificant thing._

_I cannot trust you with everything, as I do not trust __**anyone**__ that far, certainly not with my life. Such would be the utmost foolishness. I toyed with your team mates, had they not been able to survive such pitiful restrained attempts they would not have been of much use to you and simply have gotten you killed on the field someday, what with the likely-hood you would recklessly sacrifice yourself for them with your suicidal tendencies and your stated fondness for others. It was a calculated decision. Why should I waste you on Konoha fools? They cannot see your potential, they don't even know the half of it._

_Why, you haven't even told them all your secrets, have you? As for the Akatsuki, I don't see why I should share.'_

The last line dripped with smugness. But he had revealed more than perhaps he had meant to, so I was the one feeling smug. The Akatsuki were indeed real. He did know what the drive to cooperate was well enough to frame in his own words. But in a way, that just made him even more dangerous and unpredictable than before. If he had merely been the average sort of psychopath, I could have dealt with him easily, knowing I was working with an impaired person who would never rationally grasp what I was speaking to them about because they couldn't comprehend all human emotions that well, though they might seem to at times, faking sympathy at all the right moments and moral outrage.

'_Thank you for being honest. An odd action for someone who claims to have no fondness or desire for cooperation, since it doesn't get you much of anything, but still, thank you. Although you never answered if you could admit mistakes. What to do with my team mates is my own decision; I am quite capable of gauging if a situation is too tough for my team, thank you._

_And the Akatsuki, that was just curiosity, for I heard them mentioned in the same conversation as the name Itachi. Thank you for confirming they exist, that is all I wanted to know._

_Like you too.'_

I tended not to stay angry very long. A part of me wanted to though, reveled in how alive it made me feel for once. Pain, and inflicting pain. I thought I understood sadism a little better now; when you are angry, hurting people feels so much more tempting, so much more satisfying to contemplate. That understanding made me think maybe I had changed him, just a little; his message was not as angry 'die for defying me!' as it could have been, it felt more frustrated. And he had years to contemplate some of my earlier speeches to him, so it was not really surprising if he had mentally refined his defense to it. The thing is, it is difficult to carefully contemplate something calmly and be extremely angry at the same time.

Still, I was actually pretty surprised how rational this discussion sounded, although there were clear flaws in his argument and he was obviously trying to flatter me. I had to admit I had started to peg him as just a psychopath. His response came quicker this time:

_'You would not have fallen for it if I had suddenly claimed to see the great error of my ways and renounced all evil, would you? And yes, I can admit mistakes. Whether you or I share the same viewpoint on what those mistakes are is quite dubious. I will admit some of my research in the past has been flawed, however._

_Interesting how you didn't answer about telling your team your secrets. I will take that as a yes. Funny that you can't trust your own beloved team._

_You are a whelp. Do not chase after Akatsuki at your power level, they would kill you. But together with me, I could teach you and we could defeat Itachi.'_

I was feeling sorely tempted. And he had caught me in a verbal trap of my own making. It was true, I didn't trust them, didn't feel they truly liked my true self for how could they when they did not even know I was one of those 'ghosts'? They would be horrified. And their own secrets, they were keeping things from me. They didn't trust me either!

'_Will you apologize for the harm you have done? For one: Trying to bite me was entirely unnecessary. I suppose you will say it was to test me, just like with my team mates, and that if I was that weak then it would be of interest to give me a gift to make me more powerful. Well, if you were really interested in a gift, you could have carefully explained what you wanted to do and let me decide if I wanted that route to power. For two: You have killed people in your experiments who never needed to die._

_And I admit it. I don't trust my team. Would you trust little children with adult secrets? It is not out of dislike.'_

His retort made me wince at how wide an opening I'd given:

_'Have you forgotten you are a child yourself? I can easily say it was within my right to make decisions for you as an adult._

_But I apologize. Since my toying efforts did not result in biting you, they were clearly unnecessary; you were big and strong enough to look after yourself, neh? As for past mistakes, well, I have learned much from them I would not otherwise.'_

How slippery. No trace of regret in there at all. I suppose I had not really expected any regret or guilt, would have found it suspicious if there had been.

'_You are not my guardian. Random strangers don't generally get to make decisions about other people's children, or it would get chaotic._

_An apology isn't a good apology if you immediately go into why you don't regret it or why the apology isn't really needed or how the action didn't really cause any harm; that's called an excuse.'_

...the response:

_'I could be your guardian.'_

...What? What kind of response was this? He wasn't supposed to be interested in that.

A strange, stupid yearning filled me, and I cursed my child-brain for wanting a father and having really, really terrible choice in father-figures. I knew it was just a trick, playing with my emotions by paying attention to me, playing with my desire for parental attention, to get what he wanted out of me, to manipulate me more easily. It hurt, that wishfulness, that yearning, the empty void and the temptation to fill it.

My eyes felt wet. I couldn't answer. I just stared at the paper blankly before burning it so no one else could find it.

_._

_.~`````~._

_._

Chidori training.

Sand invasion.

The Hokage didn't die from the invasion or anything like that. In fact, Orochimaru never attacked like everyone worried, only Sand did. It was something of a disaster for sand, for they nearly lost Gaara, not that they would have wept. We forced them into a retreat. Gaara made me realize how weak I still was, how much stronger I needed to get.

Naruto, Sakura, me and Kakashi-sensei, we went on missions together. It was nice to finally see the real team, hyper and happy Naruto, slightly fan-girlish Sakura, quiet and reserved Kakashi. I just wished they weren't war missions.

I made progress on my chakra-detector project, now having reached my basic original goals. Using a piece of paper and a formula, you could get a numeric count of your chakra by the number of techniques you could do or how many times you could activate the paper. I also got the paper to react differently to different signatures, a little bit, mostly just different chakra affinities. I still wasn't satisfied with just that, though. I wanted something even more sensitive.

I also realized a very large problem with it: your chakra regenerated itself, so to speak, so there was a difference between what you had available to use right this moment and your total capacity. Basically this meant that it wasn't impossible to accidentally get a count of infinity, just because your chakra regenerated to full between paper activations.

I ended up building myself a microscope, though it was a pain in the ass. I'd never seen a microscope in this world, and, well, wasn't going to arouse questions by asking for one. So that meant the obnoxious process of making it myself, getting glass and experimenting around. It was fairly convenient I could melt glass with a jutsu and warp it to my wishes, but I wasn't exactly experienced at glass making. I ended up getting a book on it. It did have the convenience that no one knew what I was up to, I suppose. I allowed my project to 'end' with the excuse it had met its main goal and I wanted to throw myself into training.

Which I did. I had a natural tendency to hold almost completely back, so I had to urge myself into the effort. Sometimes antagonizing Naruto into picking a fight with me helped, weirdly, although it was mostly taijutsu practice in that case. Although Sakura would join in too, sometimes. She had these chakra enhanced punches that were quite impressive. I stopped wasting time being late with Kakashi; I wonder if he ever missed me sleeping on the bench?

I thought about the Senju tree, among other things as my thoughts had time to roam. It didn't really make a lot of sense to me. Where there is one tree of a species, there is another. And trees almost never produce almost one fruit. What were the chances that this land, which I knew couldn't be the only continent, in fact might even only be a large island with wonky weather, was the only one to produce chakra or a chakra fruit tree?

I felt like I was close to potentially breaking this already rather broken world. All you really needed was a way to collect chakra and grow yourself a new tree. Or, if more existed, to find another one. I didn't really like that pattern of thought. I put going across the ocean on to my to-do list and fell into a content pattern for awhile.

One event broke this tranquility, if you can call being in a war tranquil.

Itachi and Kisame. They attacked Naruto, though lucky this pervert, Jiraiya, was there to stop them.

"You bastard! Why? Why damn you?" I'd yelled at Itachi. Learning from past mistakes, I blindfolded myself to avoid his worst genjutsu. Unfortunately, I hadn't exactly trained blindfolded before, and it threw me off. He defeated me humiliatingly easily.

And in a whirl, they left as soon as they'd came it felt like, not a backwards glance. That was that.

Jiraiya didn't like me much when I asked him if he got women too drunk to consent so he could prey on them. Naruto didn't understand the question, and Jiraiya was pretty furious. He insisted he was an honorable pervert, an absolute contradiction in terms. I told him that when people see a powerful man ignoring consent and getting a rap on the knuckles for it and nothing else, they think they can do the same, think that the result will be a funny joke or just a bit of fun because the girl saying no doesn't matter; eroding the culture of consent isn't harmless. Treating objectification of women as a joke isn't harmless; you might not know it, but evil can tell a joke too.

That was when Jiraiya sobered and stopped joking around. He saw how serious I was, that I wasn't going to just hit him or slap him around comically like in an anime. He told me, simply: "Kid, when you get far enough into the shinobi lifestyle, you'll find pretty much all ninja pick up tics and vices. You wouldn't want me to be like Might Gai, would you?"

"Everyone should be like Might Gai," I said flatly, only a slight smirk indicating I might be joking. "I think you would look incredible in green. The women would flock to you," I tried to coax. _Everyone should be like Gai... except me. Then I could sit back and laugh at you all. _I was kind of a piss sometimes. Although, maybe I should show up in green one day, just to give Kakashi a heart attack of horror.

"Er, not in a million years... anyway, vices. Some are just more rotten than others. If they don't find a way to cope, they go mad. I promise you I only go as far as peeping."

"Ah. Maybe you should pick up writing and reading porn then, that's harmless."

"Ah, I already do that! In fact, I'm a famous author! You're a bit too young for my books though, heh."

"Oh, I'm sure I've read worse. The plot doesn't tend to be very good in those sorts of books though, so they aren't really to my tastes." For a moment, I grew worried we were going to bond over talking about perverted books.

"Hahaha, you are one precocious kid! Plot? Who needs plot for books like mine? But I'll have you know that with plot alone my books are still masterpieces!"

"I don't believe you." Crisis averted.

"Punk! No respect from any of you kids today, I swear."

"It might be funny to read one in front of Kakashi just to wig him out, though," I said mischievously.

"Ah, nice try, I'm not giving you one of my books! No matter how hilarious the results may be." When he wasn't being an ass, he was not hard to like. Wait, better rephrase that when he was being an ass to someone you didn't mind him being an ass to.

Understanding I was dealing with a psychologically damaged older man, and an older man who could potentially deal horrendous violence to my person if I disagreed with him too much at that, I decided it was pertinent to let the peeping issue go. At least for now. If by chance he tried putting his moronic super pervert philosophy into Naruto's ears... bah!

Then it turned out I didn't even have a chance to prevent him from trying to distort Naruto's mind; they went off to train without me and Sakura, and to get someone named Tsunade to help with the war effort, and heal poor Lee, who had been injured by Gaara's sand attack. I didn't mind Lee; he was obviously a hard worker, and I didn't have the heart to tell him there was a flaw in his logic about hard work beating genius. What if a genius did hard work? But, he was a harder worker than I was, so perhaps he felt geniuses were all just too lazy. He might be a little right.

Maybe there was a little Nara in all of us.

Orochimaru sent me another note, to my surprise: '_I am sorry. That must be a touchy subject for you. I should not have tried to replace your family.'_

I was both surprised and not surprised. Apologizing only after you've realized you've gone too far is the classic tactic of the manipulator, aiming to get the victim to calm down so they can restart their old behavior and then simply 'apologize' without actual regret yet again when they were caught again, rinse and repeat. And his apology was still incomplete.

It was stupid of me to have contacted him so much after I'd gotten what I basically needed out of him, which had been information on souls. I'd been lonely, and frankly it had been kind of stupid to talk to him in the first place, but, hey, it was my life, and hey, it felt a little shitty to just stop talking to someone after you got what you wanted out of them. I would just be proving him right about other human beings.

'_Hebi. How stupid do you think I am, after having the gall to say you wouldn't lie because I wouldn't trust it? You said it yourself you don't care for other people, for attachments. You won't even apologize for killing one single person, or admit it as a mistake in anything but detached terms. You only like me as much as you like your favorite color, you said so yourself. That's not what I want. I know it is difficult to accept, but people have different things that gratify them and that isn't inferior or superior, unless we're rating on how much happiness they achieve with it, in which case happy go lucky fools beat everyone._

_You find grief too painful and so avoid bonds, but I deal with it every day regardless if I attach to another or not. I can't just remove my grief like you apparently can. I've never been good at bonding or knowing how to make other people happy, to be honest, but that does not mean I want to settle for a friendship where I am just used and then stabbed in the back. If easily thrown away, shallow-faced superficial facades of friendship bother you, why not change that in your own life?_

_I can't trust you, and I already have power. You seem to have forgotten:_

_I am already immortal. All that matters now is how impatient I am and how much I want my more immediate goals._

_What do you even want from me? Do you really want to be my guardian?'_

I hesitated about sending this message. It seemed to mark the end of our conversation. Perhaps something less hostile? But things seemed to be coming to an end anyway. There was really very little more room to debate, to go anymore. We were drawing our lines in the sand. Compulsively, I added another line: '_Think about it. In the meantime, I have made a decision of my own. I am going to leave Konoha, for awhile. Perhaps forever. I can still be fond of my team from a distance. Perhaps we will meet and talk like you wished._

_Or perhaps not.'_

.

.

Orochimaru had been in the middle of writing his own message when he suddenly received a new one, to his annoyance.

'_It looks like not. Konoha sent quite a little force at me; goodbye.'_

He frowned, and thought about some of the words he had been about to send that now would not get to be seen:

"I was not lying, Neko, you little fool. I would not have minded gratifying some of your emotional clingy little urges, your pathetic little needs. It amuses me to check on the welfare of my students. Would it really have mattered if I did not truly reciprocate the feeling of familial bonds?" But apparently it did, or the silly boy would not have put up such a fuss. He would not admit it, but he struggled to understand the viewpoint of someone who wanted and craved affection. It was so alien to him at this point, even distasteful.

Selfish little Neko wanted to keep his eyes and body to himself, he thought with annoyance. But Konoha would not necessarily be that kind to him. No one would. Although, a part of him debated against stealing the body. Neko was clever, could find other ways. Could help him reach his goal of understanding jutsus, of finding immortality. Though he already had his own method of immortality, did he not?

Memories rolled through his mind, teasing at him. Voices of the past. Taunting, tantalizing, feeling like an equation that begged to be solved when in reality it was just sheer nonsense, a jagged set of puzzle pieces that went together by accident to form a nonsensical picture.

_Could you bond to someone if they were immortal, then?_

_When you are immortal, when you are powerful enough, you can indulge any silly whim._

_You forget: I am already immortal._

_I am already immortal._

_Already immortal._

_Immortal._

_Any silly whim._

The little rat had been aware and playing with him from the beginning! Not that it had worked. He thought many of their arguments were interesting but ultimately biased by their emotions, that they had yet to understand that, yes, the happy fool who thinks the world is sunshine might be happier, but he sincerely doubted such would ever work for them. Neko would come to realize eventually that knowledge and power was far more satisfying than the superficial and idiotic pleasantries of the dim witted and overly soft hearted, the meaninglessness of the short lived and unimportant.

And yet... maybe it had worked a little better than it should have. Neko was rather like a very bemusing pet. And if he was truly immortal, grief would never be a problem. Unless someone stole him from him. Like just now.

"Damn you, Neko," Orochimaru uncharacteristically swore.

15 **Finding a new way**

"Why? Why leave? Don't you like us? Don't you care? Why are you just tossing us aside?" Sakura demanded.

"I like my team mates and the other genin, but I'm not so fond of Konoha," I answered truthfully.

"But we are Konoha! Don't you see? We are its future!" Naruto missed his blow and blew apart a tree with his rasengan. Damn it Naruto, trying to kill me much? "We're all one big family! Believe it!"

"A future in a gilded cage. How can you stand being chained to one place, not able to go where you wish?" I shouldn't have been wasting my breath, it was going to make me pant all the faster, but I felt like I needed to make them see sense.

"Why would we want to go anywhere else? Besides, it isn't like you can't go outside the village, you just need permission. Like for on a mission," Sakura tried to logic her way out of the situation.

"Exactly. And if I want to quit? To go where ever I want?"

"You're so selfish. Why would you want to leave your team mates? Don't you care about us, what an emotional wrecking ball you're pummeling us with? Konoha only keeps track of its nin because with their powers, it would be incredibly dangerous if it fell into enemy hands. Imagine what the sharingan could do if used against the village! No, no need to imagine, it's already happened!" Sakura shouted, tears streaming down her face.

"That's a low blow," I mutter, feeling like an idiot for ever letting them get this close to my location. At least the other genin were successfully distracted with the false trails I'd set, but it looked like surely they wouldn't be long. Anybody would notice this much chakra exploding along. "And you don't need to worry about me, I can take care of myself. Can't you? I don't understand why this is upsetting you all this much. How did you bond to me when I've been the opposite of warm and bubbly?"

"Naruto never had any family, and he attaches very easily. He saw you as a rival, a brother to look up to." Then, with triumph. "You're like his Itachi."

That was a sucker punch. I understood all too well now, having been in that situation, been the little brother who was ignored and rarely received any attention in his brother's shadow but strove for it anyway, only to have his brother abandon him and shove him away in the most painful way possible.

It distracted me enough that I didn't notice where the real Naruto went. There were his shadow clones, but, where did he-? Smack! Pain radiated across the top of my head, and I whirled, tripping the little obnoxious baka before vanishing away. I didn't plan to fight, but to run. I was pretty good at that, at this point, having honed my speed immensely. I also happily used henge, appearing as a mere black house cat, the smaller form more difficult to pull off but also harder to see, especially with the darker color blending in with the shadows of the trees. Meanwhile, Sasuke clones ran along in different directions. I couldn't make many of them, unlike Naruto, but I'd be a fool not to notice the usefulness of clones, even if they were non-shadow type clones.

Sensing a chakra presence ahead, I veered directions, then another presence made me veer again. Panting, I thought perhaps I had lost them, and paused to look around with sharingan kitty eyes.

A shadow fell on me, and I couldn't move. _What the? How? _I quickly returned my eyes to normal.

"Hello, kitty kitty. Or should I say Sasuke?" I felt myself taking steps forward, but weirdly despite the henge I was walking on twos. Nara clan's shadow trapping technique! "Ahh, why did you have to henge to a nonhuman shape? This is such a pain." Also taking steps forward was Shikamaru, looking like he was having a little more difficulty than usual. Cats don't naturally walk on two legs, after all, and it threw off his balance a bit.

I meowed at him as innocently as possible. I did a very good cat meow impression, and he looked a little taken back. "Wait, did I get just a cat? What a drag."

Feeling smug, I readied to bolt, but another voice interrupted. "No, that's him! Keep him there." Neji arrived with Kiba. Damned Hyuuga and their damned eyes. Well, okay, like I was one to talk. And Kiba would explain how they tracked me so well: smell.

Not caring how weird it looked for a cat to talk, I growled, "How did you get me?"

"I took advantage of the fact you were a sensor and dampened down my chakra while letting the others herd you toward me. A fairly simple trap. I'm surprised you're completely alone, but then, maybe not that surprised. After all, you've tried to take off alone before, haven't you?" Shikamaru remarked. "A team this large is over-kill for one person."

"Oh! I remember that! That big camping trip everyone went on!" Kiba came up excitedly, grabbing hold of me and holding my little paws together. "Alright, I got him, you can let go." Neji grabbed on also. The distraction and the painfulness of their grip made me release my henge.

"Are you sure? I can hold on a bit longer."

If there was one flaw to his technique, it was the amount of chakra needed. He could only maintain this for five minutes. But then again that was all that was needed. I began to struggle against the jutsu, giving it a good fight, surging my chakra. "Oy, stop fighting. It's over, Sasuke, you're beaten." They began to tie my hands.

"Oh, is that so?" I said icily.

"He's just going to keep being a pain in the butt. So knock him out." Thinking quickly, knowing the blow was coming, I reinforced chakra to the back of my head and prepared to push it like I was tree or water walking. When the blow came, it certainly wasn't pleasant, but it felt like there was a small cushion, like a helmet. Shikamaru felt his own head bounce like mine, the jutsu connecting our movement. "What the hell, Kiba?"

"Ah, sorry, I don't know what happened!"

I built up chakra in my mouth, then, glad I was facing him or this would be a lot more difficult, blew fire straight at Shikamaru. "No seals! No way!" He shouted with alarm, dropping the jutsu so he could leap away in self preservation. My fire wasn't nearly as powerful as it could have been with seals, but that was fine, I was not looking to incinerate him.

Neji slammed his fingers against me, and I could feel my chakra begin to cut off. Quickly, I kicked at him, freed my hands, and substituted away, but damage was already done. "You are tough, I'll give you that," Neji stated grudgingly.

Now I was facing a full on clash, not one team but several against me. Naruto, Choji, Shino and Sakura came running in, the odds weren't looking good. Every second, I had to dodge something, and the only small mercy I had was that all of these genin (and one chuunin actually, in Shikamaru's case) had never all worked together at once before, and some of their attacks were threatening to interfere with one another. Choji and Naruto accidentally smacked into each other, and Naruto's clones made less room for everyone. Shino accidentally sent his bugs in Neji's way in his efforts to swarm me. The whole situation was chaos.

"Surround the target from all sides!" Shikamaru barked orders. I was a little relieved he seemed to be the highest one ranked here. I really didn't want to meet Kakashi today, seeing him ashamed of me would be embarrassing, although I couldn't put my finger on why. "Bugs on the periphery to swarm as he tries to escape." Things began to get less chaotic as he took leadership of the situation.

I sent fireballs loose, mostly at the bugs to incinerate them, not keen on having them drain my chakra or track me, and to clear a path. I set chidori through a set of clones, but mostly avoided using it. I got grabbed, slammed to the ground, thrown, and kicked all at various different points in the fight. I tried a basic genjutsu to make them think they'd caught me already, but Sakura saw through it and ended it pretty quickly.

"You're avoiding using your most powerful jutsus. You're holding back on us." Shikamaru noted casually, standing back and not even trying to wade his way into the melee, preferring to attack from a distance and analyze.

"No way! He's holding back?" Kiba growled. "I don't believe it." He'd gotten a rather bad burn from me, so I didn't blame him for disbelief.

I laughed. What flattery, truly, that I could do more. I couldn't muster up that much killing intent against them even if I tried.

"I do," said Naruto. "Sasuke wouldn't kill his team mates, would you Sasuke?"

"If you severely annoy me," I bluffed, but apparently not very well as he didn't even blink. Or maybe that was just Naruto's ever lasting faith in everyone and everything speaking, not my bluffing ability. "I would suggest letting me go."

"No can do," Choji said cheerfully, making a grab for me.

I substituted with Shikamaru, then proceeded to annoy the hell out of them by randomly substituting with different team mates and managing to knock Kiba and Choji down and out by surprise. Underhandedly, I also created a clone and switched with it, trying to take off again while it fought. I was on my very last legs here, so it had better work.

I managed to run to a village, very tired, and felt lucky. Maybe I could get lost in a crowd, take it slow, regain my breath, then head on.

I took a step, only to get knocked down with a punch by Sakura. "We thought you might head this way, so I left a clone behind," she cracked her knuckles.

Then she punched me into unconsciousness. I barely registered that I slumped to the ground as inky blackness took me, the world going out in a wink.

.

.

I woke, but kept my eyes closed. I knew where I was, more or less. Konoha, in a hospital bed, some needle and tubes hooked to me.

There was an argument going on heatedly: "He can't be trusted. He'll run off at the first opportunity, he's done it before. Give him to me, and I can make him into a more loyal shinobi, a weapon." It took me a moment to place the voice, and it was not a happily remembered one. The man who killed me.

"For Root, you mean." Tsunade? I barely knew the woman, but she was a medic. She must have been healing me of basic injuries, though not completely; she had obviously left some wounds sore as a lesson.

"Well, we can't just let him run loose. He's not loyal anymore. I don't want to have such a powerful and useful bloodline executed entirely. We can have him locked away and used as a sire. Such things have been done before, although he is not quite old enough yet." I didn't recognize that voice, but the suggestion was fairly sick. It was an elderly voice. A council member?

"Only with enemy clans, and not in Konoha itself!" The old man Hokage? My, my, a lot of people arguing about me. I was sure in a shit load of trouble this time. "I have not always agreed with your training methods, but, I think they might be the best bet. You do produce results Danzo, I can't argue with that."

Shit. Like hell I wanted to cooperate with the organization that murdered me once. I wonder if the Hokage even knew they'd helped send Orochimaru into his life as a nuke-nin, that they'd encouraged his sick experiments? Mind, I hadn't been the most _discouraging_ person either, liking science and all and having a maybe far too tolerant view, but I hadn't been the one that decided that asking the Hokage for legal experimentation was a step too far and worth murdering a 'bad influence' of a little kid over!

"Naruto will be broken, he loves his team mate. I have no fondness for the brat, but we should try a psychological evaluation first. He was found to be suicidal at one point, he might have been trying to run off to kill himself and save everyone the pain of seeing him dead," Tsunade pointed out. "It didn't look like he had any accomplices."

"A most disturbing theory, but it does make a great deal of sense. It wouldn't be the first time a shinobi cracked up under the strain and killed themselves, or the first time a Uchiha went mental and became useless as a tool," Danzo remarked. "A pity. I will have him looked at, I assure you."

"He may have woken up. His heart beat and other vitals changed. Let me check up on him."

Tsunade was business-like, simply checking me over before finally stating: "Well, you're physically fine, kiddo. Mentally, you're a bit of a mess, aren't you?"

"Some might say that." I stared at the wall instead of her, not really caring anymore. I felt apathy taking me over. "Why heal me if I'm just going to be executed?"

"The ninja who dragged you back all begged for your sorry, worthless traitorous hide. Don't ask me why, but they think you're a friend. Personally, I think you're a shit who leaves his friends in the dust." If that was supposed to hurt me or make me flinch, it didn't work, really. That would require fully getting where she was coming from, and I just didn't buy into the eternal life long loyalty till death do you part marriage to the village and country. Of course, if I did buy into it, that would have been shitty to say to a suicidal person.

I suppose it was part of being a soldier; didn't most societies regard soldiers who abandoned their duties as the worst sort of scum, even if they weren't actually in any battle or assigned to any specific duty when they left? It might have made more sense to someone who liked killing, I supposed. Or, no, that was a little too harsh. Someone who bought into the concept of honor, then. This was a communal society, not an individualistic one. People like me, cat-like or snake-like folk, just didn't fit in very well.

I didn't entirely comprehend why Konoha would do this; weren't they supposed to be the goody two shoes, the good guys who always go for the bonds of friendship above all else? But on another level I understood it all too well. It was because of those very tendencies to go for friendship above all else that I was seen as evil, as a traitor, and because everyone tends to see themselves as the justified great shining hero with virtues no one else possesses.

I didn't regard her as a bitch for her words. One, a male might just as easily have said those words and never have been in danger of being called bitchy (he might even be complimented for honesty, loyalty and blunt attitude; it didn't sound too far off from what Kakashi might say), and two, I don't call women bitches. It's kind of a misogynistic insult. I also don't call men dicks, for similar reasons; they are both sexist, gendered insults. One was more inflammatory than the other, but, I didn't much care about that.

"I'm not interested in going to Root, so don't even ask." I said when the Hokage came in, looking grim. "Although if you wished you could force me anyway."

"Why did you leave?"

"For the reason I left the first time. It felt suffocating." I didn't think they'd understand.

"I tolerated it from you when you were a child, but you're considered an adult of the village now, Sasuke. Tell me, were you planning to meet up with Orochimaru, one of our sworn enemies?"

I stayed silent. I wasn't really the lying type. They took this as confirmation.

"This was a serious mistake to make, one I think you'll come to regret. Now you must face the consequences of your actions, whether you are interested or not. It is truly a shame you do not possess the Will of Fire." He gave a nod, and Tsunade jerked me up from my bed rest roughly.

"I've put dampeners on your chakra, so don't think of even trying to mold jutsu," she said, eyes narrowed. She pushed me toward the horrid old man Danzo, who took my wrist painfully. I didn't give him the satisfaction of a wince.

_A breeding mule. They're actually thinking of using me as a breeding mule when I fully hit puberty. _It was fairly horrifying, and I amended my thoughts. _No, not thinking, decided on. I'm going to be made into some blank tool, and they'll certainly use me as a breeding mule then. Why wouldn't they? Root had no qualms against experimenting on and torturing children, so torturing to make children isn't much of a leap. _I shivered a bit, truly not looking forward to it.

Ah, Naruto, you clueless loyal fool. Bringing your friend home to be raped by someone you trust who doesn't understand or care for the meaning of consent. It was an all too common story, unfortunately, although usually ninjas and fireballs weren't involved.

A tremble wracked the building.

"What was that?" Everyone was on alert. Not long after, an alarm went off, and an explosion in the distance.

"The village is under attack!" With a hiss, the Hokage disappeared in a flash of smoke, and Tsunade ran to go help heal the injured and likely fight as well.

I was left with Danzo, and two ninjas who came to flank him. In a panic, I tried to summon my chakra, but whatever suppressant they had put in my system, likely with the needle, was working pretty good. I couldn't muster anything at all. If we got attacked and my guards killed, I would be defenseless.

A strange hissing came from down the hall, and I felt myself filled with a weird hope and horror at the same time. _It couldn't be._

A giant snake burst out of the wall and sank fangs into one of the ninja, smacking away another with its tail. Danzo moved rapidly backward, keeping his pain inducing grip on me the whole time. "Hmm. Let's make getting you situated quick." He headed toward a Root escape tunnel, or that much I guessed anyway, leaping out from the window and running.

"Oh, what a mess have you gotten yourself into, hmm?" A familiar sibilant voice sounded, and there, standing atop a snake, was a smiling Orochimaru, along with to my surprise the silver haired ninja who had once been loyal to Root. Had I ever gotten his name? I'd forgotten.

"You!" shouted Danzo, furious.

"I'd get loose eventually, one way or another," I told him. Another meaning death. "What are you doing here? Rescuing is out of character for you." I tried to squirm loose, but couldn't quite manage.

"Kukuku, what can I say?" Orochimaru laughed. "I decided to try something new when my spies told me you were in trouble."

"You're here for the Uchiha brat? I should have known. The timing was too precise. You'll never have the Sharingan!" Suddenly, conversation time was over and the ninja launched themselves at each other in a deadly flurry almost too fast for the normal eye to see. But it was two against one, and Kabuto broke off to land next to me.

Kabuto! That was it. The silver haired sadist had been in the chuunin exams, watching everyone and faking weakness. Orochimaru shadow cloned himself and slide up beside us with a smirk.

A snake slid up to us.

"Take us and de-summon yourself," he ordered, and it opened its mouth wide to swallow us. It was not the most pleasant sensation, rubbing up against the tongue and being cradled by teeth. Danzo screamed rage, then, suddenly, silence.

I was free of him. But what sort of new cage had I landed into? The snake spat us out, and I eyed them both cautiously as I regained my balance in a new location. "What's your aim? Why did you do this?"

"My my, Neko-kun," Orochimaru tilted his head and gave me a condescending pat on the head. "Everyone likes cats."

The statement sounded warmer if not more sane than anything I'd ever heard him say before. It wasn't said with any hiss to it. It was a strange and apparent non sequitur, so it took me a moment to grasp it.

Then a small smile slowly blossomed across my face.

"I hadn't been lying, you know," he continued slowly. "But perhaps I had been wrong. I forgot you would wish familial feelings to be reciprocal. I can't do that. But I can be fond of you, in my own way. Immortality can be quite boring if you never do anything new. Is that enough?"

That was more than I'd ever expected from him. He was not the affectionate fond type. In fact, I'd never expected any growth at all, any kindness. Gratitude filled me, if only because while so defenseless I could not figure anything he could possibly get from lying to me – he could easily kill me or take my body if he wanted right now. Perhaps he wanted to prepare it first, but... if this was genuine? "It's a start. It's a start. Thank you."

16Love it, let it go, and it will come back again

It was indeed a start. I didn't think I would ever fully trust him, but I found that what I thought I could trust, Konoha, wasn't quite as trustworthy as a little idealistic portion of me thought. Of course, someone can like you and still hurt you in a variety of ways. And on Orochimaru's part, it was probably 'you are slightly more important than my favorite color' liking. But right now? I'd take it.

Time passed. I sent Anko instructions on how to remove her curse seal, with a little grudging help from Orochimaru once he realized I was going to figure it out with or without his help.

His village (yes, it came as quite a surprise to me his band was an entire village, he hadn't spoken a word of it!) was full of some... unsavory characters, but many were there out of hope that Orochimaru could help them. He had an incredibly malicious streak in him, but I would bribe him into helping, partially by threatening to figure out the interesting puzzle all by myself. He didn't like that, you see; it was no fun getting left out and having his subject cured for him before he could do anything to them. On another level, it made sense that it would be made of unsavory characters; these were all people who for one reason or another hadn't fit in with another village, and that often meant they got kicked out or ran out.

Kabuto, I was not quite sure what to make of. I don't think he liked me, and I half suspected him of being one of the ones to report I was a bad influence on Orochimaru and getting me killed that second time. On the other hand, he clearly deeply admired Orochimaru, and his own fondness for science and medicine gave me an in to talk to him in a neutral, pleasant fashion. Although not evident at first, he was slightly emotionally warmer than Orochimaru was, with more need to attach to someone, to be useful; that was why he was a medic. I suspected he had latched on to Orochimaru to provide him with purpose.

I didn't think attaching to Orochimaru deeply and devotedly was healthy, but I was helping keep the snake in check, so it wasn't... quite as bad as it could have been. Which did not mean good, mind you. He still had a tendency to kill those who displeased him too much; I had yet to figure out a way to get through to him or soften him on that, but perhaps I already had a bit and hadn't noticed.

"I don't disagree with you killing a traitor, as hypocritical as it might seem since we are both traitors. They've shown no loyalty and are merely a threat."

"Not hypocritical at all. We simply went with our first loyalties, to ourselves, to our agendas. And his agenda contradicts ours now. It makes more sense if you don't think in terms of loyal and disloyal," he tried to educate me.

And, honestly, I thought he had a point. "Traitor is usually only a dirty word if the person is betraying you personally. If they're betraying someone else to you, they're considered a heroic spy. I concede your point. However, I'm less keen on killing someone who only might be a traitor who is a bit too incompetent. Just demote him to where he can't cause trouble or kick him out."

"Why? If he is of no use, there is no reason not to kill him. In fact, there is every reason to. He might become angered and blab what little secrets he has picked up if he in fact isn't already a traitor, he certainly would have little incentive if he got kicked out to keep his mouth shut," he countered my suggestion easily.

"But, if he or she is in fact loyal, there might be some hidden potential in him that has yet to develop. You can never run out of too many people willing to die for you. And if he has family, they could grow up loyal to you, whereas simply killing their parent or partner will not endear you to them at all."

"If he's a traitor, he could teach them to be disloyal, doubling my problem," he dismissed.

"So, separate them, have him interrogated, if still uncertain put him somewhere he can still be useful. As a spy in a place you already have spies but he doesn't know which ones those are, for instance; then you can check for discrepancies in information."

Orochimaru considered this for a little while. "Not a bad idea. Very cautious, though not as much as just killing him. I could have him kill someone to prove loyalty."

"That wouldn't prove anything but a willingness to be ruthless. If someone hates you enough, they'll stab their own grandmother to get to you." If he was going to be ruthless, he should be smart ruthless. Making him kill an old team mate or something like that was just idiotic.

I was the one who dared to ask him the questions no one else would, even if his responses were sometimes a sarcastic one word. What his plans for the village were, what he was doing for the future, what kind of policy he was going to enact and if he would consider avoiding some of the same mistakes Konoha made. Ultimately, it was a village of killers, and there was only so much my idealistic side could do about that, but I enjoyed being an adviser all the same. I felt I had made a good difference with what small power I had available in this situation, and I was well respected, although a few called me a brat. I supposed I deserved it; I could be very independent, and that was the same as 'brat' in many people's books. I liked having the freedom to choose my own goals and wander off as I wished, though funnily enough given the freedom to wander away at any time I didn't do it nearly as much as I could have. Partly, because it was a dangerous world out there, and that had fully sunk in now.

I relaxed when orochimaru tried to win arguments with me; I found the idea of the man agreeing with me and then hiding truths to manipulate me far more worrying a prospect than him just trying to win arguments. It was the difference between 'this person is evil, you should kill them, oh, whoops, actually I made that information up on their evils' and 'this person is someone I consider a threat and I would like him eliminated, here is why I think that would be the best option above others to get what I want'.

I did suspect the man of trying to socially groom me though. Well, not suspect, knew. He'd done a remarkable job of cutting me off from other social contacts and ensuring my contact with him was of a fairly positive sort but never something I could take for granted every day, a trick in the manipulator's hand book, and he took too much delight in coaxing me to be more like him. I wondered if he was even doing it consciously, or if he was just reflexively manipulative at this point, seeking petty power over me.

Training sessions were harsh and brutal, but I enjoyed them. I was embarrassed how greatly I'd underestimated Konoha's tracking skills and how I had gotten caught by a bunch of genin. I wasn't going to let something that humiliating happen again, I promised myself.

One conversation left a wound upon my heart, aimed to tear at me, to coax me into hate, for our influence upon each other went both ways:

"You spoke of friendship, of being capable of caring, but you abandoned your friends, did you not?"

"I never claimed to be any good at friendship. I suppose I did. Our needs were opposed; they needed me to stay, and I needed to go. How do you balance different needs in a friendship? That is something I have never truly figured out." I shrugged.

"I told you, friendship is a shallow thing," Orochimaru hissed at me. "When you cannot fulfill what they want of you, they will call you traitor, and try to control you."

With reflection on this, I asked him with surprise, "Is that what happened with you, from your viewpoint?"

"Yes, you could say that," he looked contemplative. "They were fools, and I used them. They could not accept my true face, my need for power and knowledge. And you need, want that as well, do you not? That was why you had to leave. Such things are entirely opposed; you could never have gotten what you desired there, and they would always hold your dreams beneath their own. That is how friendship works." I couldn't believe I was listening to him, but...

"Yes. You're right. It should be possible to find friendships where your dreams aren't opposed, but that hasn't happened for me," I sighed. "Very well. I consent to the cursed seal. You say it will grant me power?"

"Good boy," he purred. That day left me with an awakened rage I knew not how to fully tame, except perhaps to kill Itachi and come to some sort of end with all this. With old obligation fulfilled, perhaps I could put my sorry mind to rest.

I couldn't say I was too pleased once I realized the cursed seal could send me into a killing frenzy like a piranha with a sword instead of sharp teeth, nor about waking up stained in blood. He reassured me it hadn't been anyone innocent, but that might only have been because he sensed I was close to snapping at him and taking off when he wasn't looking.

In spite of this cold rage across my heart and my growing study of the art of ruthlessness, I felt a little happier overall, and it surprised me. Shouldn't I have been miserable, in a place offering far less closeness, friendship and cheerfulness than Konoha hypothetically had? But it offered more space, more intellectual stimulation, more people like me. Introverts who sometimes felt more satisfied by keeping a honest distance from others, calmly discussing books rather than throwing big parties, bluntly letting you know what they wished of you in rational, clinical terms. People who didn't freak out or look like you betrayed them if you told them you were going to work on a project and then mostly ignored them for a month.

I guess to a degree, I really hadn't realized just how poorly I had fit in before. I had thought of it as my fault; after all, I was the abnormal one, the weird science obsessed one who couldn't comprehend how Sakura and Naruto could get so loud demanding for attention. I liked children, but I didn't fit in with them, they didn't make great peers for me. Couldn't say I fit in with adults well either, never having fit in anywhere. And I had difficulty escaping the vibe sometimes that Kakashi didn't really want a team, that we were just a hassle to him; children are sensitive, they pick up on lack of enthusiasm. Perhaps he should have disbanded the team early. We were never a good fit, even if militarily we would have worked well.

But I did end up seeing some of my old team again, as it happened. I was wearing a mask, that of a black cat, to conceal my identity, passing by the area. They were on a mission, and I stopped, sensing them. Out of curiosity and a little nostalgia I observed them from a distance. Some man I didn't recognize although his chakra signature felt vaguely oddly familiar, along with Sakura tending to an injured Kakashi's arm. He didn't seem too badly beaten up, just cut a bit, possibly with exhaustion from sharingan overusage. Naruto wasn't there.

They seemed happy, talking to one another, if a bit grim due to the mission. I was glad for them. Some people are just no good for each other, total opposites.

We had blossomed apart. And that was okay. Different didn't mean inferior.

I prepared to leave when I spotted a large summoned centipede heading their way, knocking down trees. I saw my ex team mates brace for attack. Feet refusing to leave, I found myself doing something utterly stupid.

I jumped in the way and let loose a large fireball, incinerating the centipede. It shrieked and writhed, not quite dead yet, and spat poisonous acid in my direction. "You lot are Konoha nin, right?" A swift and suspicious nod from Sakura. "You alright?"

The beast thrashed its massive head in my direction, and I ducked and swerved. I didn't even need to counter attack however, as large plants shot up from the ground. It was bizarrely familiar. _Tenzo? _I wondered in shock.

"Who are you? Why are you helping us?" Sakura said suspiciously, punching down the beast with one earth shattering blow. The trembles made me almost lose my balance.

"He's a ninja of the sound," Kakashi wheezed out, sitting himself up. "An ANBU, from the looks of it."

"Correct. I am the wandering Black Neko. I was just passing through." After screwing with the Akatsuki by meddling with the demon container Han and convincing him to take off so the group couldn't find him. If Itachi was involved with them, I wanted to annoy him as much as possible. "I figured it wouldn't hurt to foster friendly relations between our two villages."

"You'll have to accept our apologies if we don't exactly trust you."

"Tch, that's fine!" I waved my hand. "I'll just wander off now then." I turned to leave and hopped up a tree.

"Wait. Won't your village be angry if you don't show up back home soon?"

"Oh?" I turned my head. "They're used to me being late, actually. I do pretty much whatever I want."

"You sound like a terrible shinobi!" Sakura exclaimed. "You're worse than Kakashi-sensei."

"Sakura!" Kakashi rebuked.

"Cha, you know it's true sensei!"

"You went on a mission solo and you aren't even injured?" the other ninja in their group, a brown haired man, spoke abruptly. "We accept your help. Do you have medical skills?" I nodded to this, though my medical skills were nothing exceptional. "Come over here, slowly."

"Ah, I have medical skills Yamato! I can heal you guys just fine without help," Sakura complained.

"Be as it may, Sakura, it wouldn't hurt to let you reserve more of your chakra." Kakashi then leaned in to whisper into her ears. With a discreet seal behind my back, I listened in with a sound jutsu. "It also wouldn't hurt to use this as an opportunity to scout for information. We know very little about him or Sound. If he's in league with our enemy here, I'd rather keep an eye on him than have him run off to do who knows what behind us."

"Ah, good point," Sakura gave in. "Alright, the mission is, a bug using ninja has been kidnapping people, cocooning them, and stealing their life energy to feed their hive. Our aim is to stop them."

I approached Kakashi, slowly with hands up to show I meant no harm, then put them down for a healing palm jutsu.

"You've got basic proficiency with it, but, I see it isn't your specialty, am I right?" Sakura observed. "Here, lend me some of your chakra, I can guide it better."

"Hn," I gave a sharp nod, agreeing. Her hand covered mine, and I was surprised how soft it felt after all that training and rigors it had gone through. I gently intermixed my chakra with hers.

"Alright, that should be good. Let's move off!" Kakashi stood up, giving a small stretch. In a blink of an eye, we moved off through the trees toward the center of the hive. Swarms of insects, many man-sized or bigger, attacked, and we proceeded to smash, burn, and electrocute swaths of them.

Along the way, we'd encounter cocooned victims, which we would cut down, as well as traps that we would disable. Yet it felt like we were no closer to finding the center of the hive or freeing all of the victims. We needed to find the ninjas behind all of this.

We retreated out of the forest for the night to go rest, ready to try again tomorrow. There, to my shock, I saw a familiar flash of orange clothing and yellow hair. _Ah, not so good. If I'm discovered, the sannin, Jiraiya, he's traveling with might prove a threat to me. _I didn't feel too threatened by Team 7, though, no matter how much they had grown... I felt I had grown more.

"Naruto! Is that you?" exclaimed a happy Sakura. Naruto did a turn about, face breaking into a look of sheer joy.

"Ah! Sakura! Fancy meeting you! What a funny coincidence."

"It is!"

Naruto looked more intelligent, astonishingly. He was actually wearing black along with that orange. He noticed me and grew serious. "Who's this stranger?"

"Wandering Black Cat Neko of Sound," I introduced myself with a little amused bow. This didn't seem to put him at all at ease, and I wondered what he'd heard of Sound, or if he'd finally grown some proper ninja paranoia. "I just happened to be passing through this way and noticed this group," I waved over at Yamato, Kakashi, and Sakura together. "getting attacked by a giant insect."

"Wow, really?" His eyes grew big. Okay, opinion taken back; Naruto hadn't changed at all.

"Reaaalllyyy," Sakura affirmed very slowly.

"Ah, I could help you guys! One more mission just like old times again!" He had no idea. "Pervy sage just went off to drink and flirt again. We booked a room here."

"We'll be booking a room too. We need to plot out the points we've been attacked by the bugs and try to deduce a pattern or a scheme we can use to lure out the controllers while we rest up," Sakura chatted.

"Carefully check yourself for tracker bugs first," Kakashi ordered.

We all did so; I turned my back to them as I used my sharingan for a moment, quickly patting myself down and squishing some tiny fleas. "Found fleas."

"Fleas? Yuck!" Naruto exclaimed. "Don't get near me with them!"

I felt annoyed. Dumbass. "I am a professional, I'm not going to get fleas on you," I said testily.

.

–

.

I took a room to myself. Naturally, being a properly paranoid ninja, I listened in on my temporary allies, using sound jutsu to amplify their voices into my ears.

"- he must know Sasuke and Orochimaru!" Naruto's loud voice made me regret the amplifier almost immediately.

I felt surprised. So, they knew Orochimaru ran sound, did they? Their spies must be quite good. This would be more dangerous than I'd wished, then.

"Not necessarily, from my understanding, Sasuke rarely shows his face outside of training and is barely known by the lower down at Sound. But you said his name was the Wandering Black Cat, right?" Jiraiya's concerned voice answered Naruto. "I've heard of him. I would be careful. My reports say he's very powerful, very high up, and that even Orochimaru listens to him and tolerates him in a way he wouldn't anyone else. He's another apprentice of Orochimaru. Some even go so far as to call him the Second Leader of Sound." Didn't know that. Then again, I occasionally strategized plans and spoke them in a way to others that made it clear they were orders, and Kabuto didn't have a whole lot influence on me; I'd always thought of him as being second in command but never treated him as my superior, just the lackey bringing in official orders from higher up.

"So he definitely knows Sasuke! I need to go talk to him right now and demand what he knows! We're running out of time before Orochimaru has the chance to snatch his body!" Snatch my body? Hmm. They had to be referring to the immortality technique I had modified. I was confident it could be used without stealing anyone's body now, or well, any living human's. Orochimaru would be a fool and an idiot to attack me now, and if he did, I was becoming powerful enough to take him on. Maybe I already was. That was unlikely, though; he'd always held back in training because he didn't want to lethally injure me.

"Don't be a fool! There's another rumor you should know. I find it difficult to believe, because I can't see Orochimaru sharing his deepest secrets with anyone. A rumor he's immortal."

"No way," Naruto took in a heavy breath. "No way he's that strong! Now I definitely want to face him and see what he knows about Sasuke!"

"I think I may be able to confirm that rumor." A different voice. It was the most unfamiliar one, so it had to be Yamato.

"What? You've met him, Yamato? That's the first I've heard of this," said Kakashi, a note of rebuke.

"It was an incredibly long time ago, when I was a little boy, and... an experiment of Orochimaru's. Another child called Neko sneaked in. He tried to rescue us and bring us to safety, but we were caught. He fought with surprising skill, but his style indicated no real formal training. I don't know why he wasn't part of the same experiment as me. I didn't even really remember that day until now," he took in a sharp breath. "but when I asked after him later, I was told he had been killed for being disobedient. To be honest, at the time I thought he was a little girl, he had such a high pitched voice and long unkempt hair. He was so dirty and unwashed, I admit he could have looked like almost anything under all that filth."

"So he really did come back from the dead?" Shock permeated Jiraiya's voice. "But that was before Orochimaru attempted any immortality technique, to my knowledge. No wonder Orochimaru is interested in him. I wonder what sort of sick bastard he is."

"He didn't strike me as cruel, at the time. Quite altruistic, actually. I'd love to speak with him and find if he's really that Neko."

"Anyone who can stand Orochimaru has deep issues. But you'll get your chance."

"Yeah, and I'm gonna be the first to talk to him!" Naruto, I could practically hear the goof grinning ear to ear with determination and glee at the thought of potentially provoking an enemy with stupid questions. Well, okay, to be fair, it was probably more like grinning at the idea of getting answers about Sasuke. I was quite confused why everyone was so god damned obsessed with me, but he'd reassured me years ago he wasn't secretly a fangirl.

"Hold your horses. We'll let him get tired out on the mission first and then confront him, in case he turns dangerous."

Not a bad plan. I canceled my jutsu, summoned a snake to watch for me, and settled to rest. I knew they were honorable enough not to assassinate me in my sleep. Well, okay, most of them. I didn't entirely trust Kakashi, being that he'd invented his own assassination technique.

In the morning, I enjoyed the look of unease, excepting Yamato, they all had regarding me. I was in a pretty good mood, honestly, and decided to mess with them. Because there are fewer things more fun to a suicidal person than messing with the minds of highly paranoid and stabby ninja. "You look well rested, Tenzo."

"Tenzo? There's no one of that name here," Naruto said skeptically.

"Ah, Neko. It's you. It's really you," said 'Yamato', voice heavy with awe. Everyone else looked surprised, with Jiraiya looking grumpy and concerned, a dark look on his face that didn't escape my attentions. "I can't believe I let myself forget about you, after you gave me the strength to go on, and the words I live my life by."

I was taken back, and waved a hand is dismissal. "It was no trouble. Forget about it again."

"But how could I forget?" The other ninja were uncharacteristically silent. "You said no one could ever be happy trapped in a tank. That kindness pays more than spite, and is often the most logical path to take. You risked Orochimaru's wrath for my sake, and got punished over me."

I scanned their faces. I could tell Naruto and Sakura were on the path to regarding me as one of their forever buddies, touched by this story. Without even meaning to, it looked like I had won them over. To be honest, I had completely forgotten about my attempts to cajole Kabuto into regarding kindness as the most logical of things, or that Tenzo had over heard me speak then. Jiraiya looked carefully blank, the look of a conflicted ninja who doesn't want to show what he's feeling to the outside world. Kakashi, calculating, like he often did, that small subtle look in his eye that meant he was taking things seriously.

"You're one of Orochimaru's experiments," Jiraiya said quietly. I wonder if he was wondering if I'd been created by him in a vat.

"On occasion," I admitted casually. "My life has never meant very much to me. So you should forget about what I've done. Let's just get on with the mission, shall we?"

"No!" Naruto's hand curled into a fist. "If you saved his life, you should let him say thank you!"

"But I didn't save his life. I failed and he just went back in the tank." I shrugged. "A failure isn't anything to remember." It was nice to see him again, but it was a bit embarrassing to have the past drudged up.

"But you helped save my sanity. In so, you saved my life. Thank you." Tenzo bowed, and the air in the room grew even more awkward.

I tugged at the cloth around my neck, feeling a bit warm. "You're welcome." I moved to go, opening the door and leaping into the trees. They leaped after me. "I don't know what conclusion you reached, but I believe the deepest mass of insects is in the south-east, with a decoy mass in the north of smaller size. We should head south there to find our insect specialist causing all this havoc, and perhaps the insect queen."

"You're sharp. That's the same conclusion as we came to," Kakashi noted warily.

We headed out. Something was eating at Tenzo, though, for he ended up speaking again. "How could you want to live in a cage, after you said no one could be happy in a tank?"

"Hn? Well, I never said I was looking to be happy, and two, I'm not caged. I come and go of my own free will." I was feeling chatty today. I found myself just hoping I could knock some sense into their heads, though, since they were certain to ask about Sasuke.

"Another thing..." Yamato spoke again. "I thought you died."

To reveal or not reveal? Sometimes I grew so tired of my own secrets. "That's correct."

Shock rippled across the group, and Tenzo looked pained. "How?"

"Ask Danzo. He murdered me as a child. As for how I came back to life, I honestly don't know. I've been researching to find that out, but my results have come up quite empty. There aren't a lot of cases of someone becoming coming back to life for no reason, you know?" For fun, I spun about to jump backwards so I could look at them. "But don't feel guilty. Danzo didn't murder me over you."

"What do you mean?" Tenzo's voice became more cautious. A bug flew past. We cut it down.

I stopped, balancing precariously on a snapped branch hanging on another stronger branch like a see-saw. "I mean, he didn't like me influencing Orochimaru. Ask him yourself."

"That's impossible," Jiraiya's voice grew hard and angry. "I've tried talking to Orochimaru. He can't be influenced by anyone, I'd know." He came toward me, possibly like he wanted to hurt me. "An action like that is treasonous, and a serious allegation against a council member."

"Well, I think Danzo was over-reacting too." I gave ground peaceably, jumping away from him.

"No, I demand to know. I've heard your reputation, I know you have his ear." Make up your mind. First no one can, next you know I can? But there was a pungent odor of desperation and sadness here, so it was understandable. "What do you say to him to make him listen to you?"

"Make him? Nothing. He often doesn't listen to me at all." I knew this wasn't very satisfying.

"You must say something."

"Do you talk to Uchiha Sasuke too?" Naruto asked. "Does he listen to you? What do you say to them?"

My shoulders sank. They wouldn't like the answer: "Cold, ruthless calculation. It's the only thing that gets through. And sometimes not even that. It's a pure, consuming hate that prevents them from coming back to Konoha. I wouldn't even try." Alright, the hate on my part was a lie, but perhaps it would get to them and make them give it up. "I keep them saner than they would be otherwise, and curb their pointless blood lust, but that's the extent of what I can do."

I could tell I'd lost their trust now, except maybe Yamato's. That was good. They shouldn't trust too much.

"You don't seem hateful," Sakura said carefully. "If you don't mind, why not come to Konoha? We could help you research your condition."

"Konoha's soul research is far less extensive. I also don't much desire to get experimented on and killed again by Danzo," I said sharply.

"Orochimaru is a deal with a devil," Jiraiya said coldly. "You'll end up regretting going to him. Everyone eventually does."

"Perhaps," I said with equal cool. "But the devil knows what souls are."

"You're leaking us all this information for a reason," Kakashi deduced. "A shinobi of your caliber would not do this unthinkingly." Flatterer. Also wrong. "Is your agenda to get us to suspect the Konoha council?"

"Sasuke wanted me to convince you all to stop chasing him. He thinks you're pests." If they thought about it carefully, they'd realize this motivation didn't quite match up, but I thought it better to just give them a hidden motive to find so they wouldn't beat themselves over looking for the underneath. "I admit I was also curious about his old team mates." I shrugged. "And here I've barely had any chance to see what you can do."

"I'll be glad to show you! And then you'll know I'll never give up on Sasuke!" Naruto said, proceeding to make no sense. He ran off.

"Um, okay?" I said, confused.

"Don't mind him, he's always like that," Sakura scoffed.

"Hey!" he exclaimed in the distance. "Come on!"

Chuckling I followed with the rest.

.

.

They were impressive, I give them that. I think the mood was considerably more jovial and relaxed after we fought together. Jiraiya looked like he'd seen a ghost – ironically – when I released my spirit from my body to attack the enemy ninja. "Where did you learn that?"

"Orochimaru?"

"That bastard... no, you need a natural affinity for it to pull off that technique." That surprised me. Had Orochimaru been keeping secrets from me? "I knew someone else who could manifest their spirit outside their body, a man named Dan."

"Interesting," I remarked.

We continued battle. It was, in my opinion, fairly unremarkable, a straight forward affair of locating and killing the giant spider queen, wasp queen, and flea queens, though some of the bugs managed to sap a bit at my chakra and blood, to my annoyance. Jumpy little buggies just didn't want to stay still. I had taken on the giant flea queen all by myself, and was a little winded.

Which was exactly what they wanted, wasn't it? As Naruto gave a magical speech of friendship to the main villain behind all of this, I pulled out a book to read from a seal in my pouch. Kakashi tensed when he saw me reaching for a pouch, then incredulous when he saw it was just an entomology study book. I had always rather liked bugs when they weren't biting me, and it was something to read. No, I hadn't known there would be bugs ahead of time; I had lots of different books with me. I tried to identify a species of butterfly that landed in front of me, flipping through pictures and trying to follow it around as it flew from flower to flower without startling it.

"Just passing through, aye?" his voice was heavy with suspicion. I supposed it looked bad.

I shrugged and showed him my other books: book of diseases, math, anatomy book, animal field guide, mineral and rock guide, for weather reading a farmer's almanac. I was an avid reader.

He looked almost disappointed. "Hm. Alright then."

Seeing they'd won the day, I packed my books up and went to leave silently.

"Hey, wait! You helped out, you should celebrate with us!" Sakura's voice stopped me, and I turned my head around to see her smiling at me. I was surprised and uncertain what her motive here was, but dipped my head and decided, what the heck, I could drink a little sake with them. We were legal adults, we might as well if we wanted. And it would cast suspicions on my age if I refused to drink because of age, although I could just tell them I disliked drink. Yeah, I'd do that last one, actually, it seemed simplest. I needed to stay sober here.

.

.

The village we rescued from insect apocalypse celebrated with fireworks that night. I watched for a little, politely accepting dinner with them, though I really didn't belong there. Tenzo seemed oddly happy to have me around though. He kept looking at me, it weirded me out a bit.

"If it isn't rude, may I ask, why are you chasing Sasuke?" I asked.

I'd mentally prepared myself for all the things they might say: that he is a friend who needs to be retaught the value of friendship, that a family or team needs to stay together, that he 'belongs' to the Leaf and can't just leave, that he's a traitor and must be brought to justice.

"Because he's like a brother to me," Naruto said with uncharacteristic quietness and solemness. "I won't let Orochimaru get his grubby hands over him, hurt him, warp his mind and steal his body."

The food on my chopsticks fell off from lack of attention and lax hold as I examined him, unable to entirely believe what I'd just heard. "So all of that is just to – to protect him?" It hadn't crossed my mind as a possibility. I suppose I am not used to others looking after me.

The uncertainty in my voice didn't go unnoticed by the others, but Naruto just gave a characteristic sincere grin. "Yup."

"I believe you give your team mate too little credit. You can protect yourselves, and he can do the same. I've seen Sasuke, he's always seemed strong enough to take care of himself. In fact I don't think he can really remember anything else," I confessed.

"You've seen him? How is he?" Sakura dubbed this more important than arguing with me. One had to credit her with good taste.

"He's grown very strong. In fact, I'd say he's on par with me. I'd feel quite unlucky and baffled if I had to go against him." This amused me perhaps a little too much to say. It sounded so vain, but on another level it wasn't hard to be detached. It was easy for me to think of Sasuke as someone else. I didn't feel like they could possibly be talking about me, even though they were. I was... like an imposter, the Neko side having overwhelmed the rest of me. Him. I was a monster who shouldn't have been sitting here.

"He's always inspired me to try to become stronger, so infuriating when he looks down on me that it makes me want to prove I'm worthy to fight; so it inspires me to hear you say that," said Naruto. "He's my rival. More than that, he's the brother I never had."

I felt a little guilty. "Sometimes brothers are quite shitty. I suppose he's done a good job of living up to that for you, then." Kakashi had an interestingly thoughtful look on his face, like he'd just made a connection. He knew I knew about Itachi, and that I sympathized. If not for my proof that I was Neko, he'd likely have accused me of being Sasuke right then and there.

"No, you weren't there. He took me into his home, gave me food, protected my life with his own. He wouldn't have done that if he didn't care, somewhere deep down inside."

"Maybe he cared once, Naruto, but not now. He abandoned you for power," Jiraiya said dismissively. "People change."

"I don't care if I'm a fool. I am going to bring him back." His hands clenched in determination, and he looked me straight in the eyes. "You! Will you help me?"

I pretended embarrassment, putting a hand to the back of my head. "Well, I promised Sasuke to try to convince you _not _to chase after him, so that's kind of cross purposes to my mission. But I'll give him a message for you."

"Tell him that we're coming for him, and that we miss him and worry about him," Sakura said softly.

"Is that all?" I said with surprise. Not good with argument, were they... "Not anything about, oh, how you want to protect him?"

"I think that might just piss him off," said Naruto thoughtfully. "As you said, it sounds like we think he can't protect or take care of himself. But I'm worried. I wish he'd realize he doesn't have to do everything alone, and that he doesn't need to pursue a path of self destruction. See, it's not that he can't take care of himself, it's that I think he doesn't want to!"

That was quite articulate. And strikingly true. A large part of me really didn't care if I threw myself away, if I ran myself to the ground and left myself in tatters trying to chase Itachi to justice or if I blew myself up in some idiotic experiment. There was no meaning, no reason not to. "I think you're right. He doesn't want to," I agreed with him amiably. "The question is, how do you balance need with wants, with right to self determination? If you would sacrifice yourself for a cause, why can't he?" I tilted my head, forgetting about dinner entirely and enjoying the philosophical conversation, waving a chopstick at him before remembering that in the hands of a ninja nearly anything could be a lethal weapon and threat. "How do you decide for him what his needs are?"

"If he kills himself, he won't have any needs anymore," Sakura said calmly. "We care about his well being. Yes, more than about his self destructive wants. I don't think they even make him happy, or that he truly wants to hurt himself or cut off all bonds to everyone, so why should we prioritize that over his well being?"

"You are very kind. He doesn't deserve you as team mates." They'd grown so much. "He's not a friend to you. Why are you a friend to him?"

"Because I never abandon anyone. I want to help everyone. I'm like everyone's friend. It's my ninja way!" Naruto exclaimed, grinning broadly.

"Those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash," Kakashi added in.

Sakura was oddly silent; I wondered if she was struggling with the question. Good for her, that would make her the only one in the lot with a lick of sense to consider that maybe she could be friendly to him without declaring him an outright friend; there were degrees, after all, and you didn't have to be friends with everyone you didn't plan to kill.

I couldn't help but smile. "I'll pass on the message." I stood up.

I seriously considered removing my mask, feeling moved with the desire for earnest, honest conversation. To let them know I was touched they cared, that I was okay, honestly. I realized their dreams and mine weren't in struggle anymore, if they even had been. They had merely cared about my well being. I had just been too blind, too confused and paranoid to recognize it.

And yet, if I did, what would happen? Would I just go straight back? I couldn't yet. I hadn't finished my training to my satisfaction, I hadn't made any attempt at Itachi, and in truth, going to Konoha I'd just be going straight back to the captors who thought it would be fun to imprison me and seriously contemplate raping me for my blood line; even if the Hokage said no, my old murderer clearly wasn't trustworthy.

"You know what? I'll even help you a little." I tapped my mask in thought. "I'll try to get him to give you a message back, or even arrange a meeting in person. Would you like that?"

"Yes! Oh, thank you." Naruto whooped.

"Caution, Naruto, this could easily be turned into a trap," Jiraiya took over the situation. "The meeting would have to be in an area and time of our choosing."

"You could easily use that to try and trap Sasuke. Although, he could probably still get away. It'll also be difficult to make him go anywhere he doesn't want to, and I don't want to get called a traitor. If you're really worried about it, we can just exchange a message."

"No way, we want to see Sasuke, if you please," Sakura put in before her seniors could get a word in. He could sense they didn't entirely appreciate it, as it lacked caution, but, it was her team mate after all.

"Alright, how about a compromise. How about by the Fire Border, on the border nearest to the land of rice?"

"I don't really care where it is," Naruto shrugged. "As long as Sasuke shows up."

"It sounds acceptable."

"I think we four or five," Kakashi gave a glance at Tenzo, who nodded. "should be sufficient for most things. But it still makes me uneasy, and I wish you two would put a little more caution into things before agreeing to things."

"Bah, but then I wouldn't be me!" Naruto exclaimed. I didn't agree; he'd be different, but he would still be Naruto if he pointed his enthusiasm somewhere else.

"Your actions aren't exactly over flowing with loyalty to Orochimaru. Would you perhaps be interested in being a spy?" Jiraiya asked.

"No thanks, bub," I refused. "I might reveal something if I feel like it, but otherwise you're out of luck." Although, that might not be so bad. If Orochimaru pissed me off on something, I could tattle on him to his team mate. That was kind of a funny idea actually. A good way to permanently lose his trust, but, did I have that?

"A shining example of principles, you are," Jiraiya said with dry distaste. The feeling was mutual. "A foot trying to go in too many doors is a foot in no door.'

"Not shiny by Konoha principles, no."

.

.

note: I had originally intended the final line to be 'He took his mask off' and have that be the end of this fic, with a very open but happy ending, but, bah, this story wouldn't die!

Neko/Sasuke would have removed his/their mask at the end, not because he wants to let them control where he goes or what he does with his life, but because he finally recognizes they really aren't out to hurt him, that they love him, and that _he __**loves them back**_**.**

But he has enemies in Konoha, and his issues, especially his trust issues and desire to do everything on his own, aren't quite sorted out yet.

17True meaning

Someone uses force to try and kidnap you, to force you to do what they want you to do, because they think their wishes are more important than yours, and that if you don't put their wishes above yours, you're being a bad friend.

Do you have the right to use force back?

Yes.

In tropes we would say this 'strawman has a point' if it was a fictional character, or if talking about a real person we might say something like that 'Hitler loved sugar and puppies, but sugar and puppies are not evil'. You can build up a person to be as vile as you like, their arguments still stand alone; otherwise it's an ad hominum, an attack on an argument via character. If the person doing the kidnapping were the main character of a book, we might say that this was a case of protagonist centered morality, since everyone who disagrees with them is certain to be more morally repugnant and kick all our favorite puppies. This becomes even more obvious when if a character commits the same action as another, say seeking to get stronger for their own dreams, it's still considered superior and above the other less favored character.

Hmm. 'My name is Renego Montoya. You killed my father, prepare to die'. In this universe, he'd be a villain for wanting revenge, or something.

Someone you trust kills your family. You aren't going to trust anyone, not to help you, not to be close to you, any damn time soon. The only people who show great attention to you are teachers who praise you for your successes (and look at you with pity when you fail, rare as that may be) and people who want to get close to you for your name, or your pants, or/and the romantic image they've built of you (not that you blame them, they've been taught to romanticize), or anything but the real you.

So, with all this, you can imagine I was nervous about the meeting. We'd agreed on two weeks of time, but it felt both too short and too soon at the same time. Plus, training turned out a little more painful than normal, and I was nursing a nasty cut and bruise on my shoulder that hadn't fully gone away with jutsu. I wasn't willing to waste a huge amount of chakra to fix it up perfectly, unless I got in a serious fight.

I nervously scouted them a little before approaching. Only five that I sensed, though more could be hiding. I scanned a bit, didn't immediately see or sense anything out of the ordinary. Okay. This could go horribly bad, but, hey, I was bored and it had been nice to have someone talk sweetly and affectionately about me.

They lit up when they saw me, staring with disbelief that I was really there.

"Hey. I heard about your speech. It was quite saccharine." Having my mask off, I found myself acting more like a jerk, impulsively trying to push them away with my words which had a sneering tone to them.

"You're a grouch as always," Naruto noted gruffly, folding his arms.

"Mm. Look, I'm touched, really I am," my voice lightened a bit. "that my old team cares about my well being. But I am alright, see? I haven't been chopped into liver, and even if I am, it's still my choice. I can look after myself."

"You shouldn't have to, and you don't need to," Sakura cajoled. "Why would you even want to? Do you really think you can't get stronger with us? We've gotten plenty strong!"

Ah, now I'd hurt their dignity. "I don't doubt you have. But how did you do it? You each sought out your own sannin," I cast my gaze toward Jiraiya. "I've heard about you all, naturally. So you must believe me when I've learned things I never would have anywhere else, no offense Kakashi-sensei."

"Maah, you're pretty tough to just show up alone with all of us here. Or just cocky?" Kakashi straightened his posture and put his book away, gaze serious.

"You could rip me in half, I'd be fine," I raised my hands and exposed my palms, then dropped them in a 'so what?' manner. I had to admit, I felt mildly threatened, but not that threatened. Not anymore. Although who knew what surprises Naruto had up his sleeves?

"I'll fight you, and show you just how strong I am," Naruto looked pumped, an aggressive toothy grin on his face. "We'll see how good at protecting yourself you really are."

"I'll fight you too," promised Sakura. "I'm even physically stronger than Naruto."

"I wouldn't mind retesting you," said Kakashi in a dark tone that indicated testing wasn't what he really had in mind. Naruto looked ready to charge me, and started to walk forward.

I held up my hand in a 'wait' gesture. "And what of a different kind of strength? Have you been training your mind?"

Naruto paused, looking shifty like he suspected this was a trick question and he felt paranoid about answering. In a way, it was a trick question... because it was rhetorical. Sakura seemed to understand this instantly, "I have. How exactly have you been training yours?"

"With a wily opponent," I answered simply. Then I took a breath, and walked straight at Naruto, the weakest link here, before stopping inches from him and leaning imposingly. "You need to start questioning the world around you, instead of contently being the fool and hoping to end up lucky every time. The entire shinobi system is broken, and your faith in it has left you blind to your own enemies within. I have enemies in Leaf who would happily see me assassinated or used as a tool, I have enemies in Sound who feel the same, no matter what village I go in, I'll find enemies." I glanced at an unhappy Tenzo, thinking about Root.

"You trust too much, Naruto. What if I had been after your head, what if I'd been holding a kunai just now and stabbed it in your ribs? You didn't know I wasn't after just power." They all looked interested at this statement, until I had said it, they hadn't known. Some like Jiraiya didn't look too trusting about it. "You shouldn't have called me friend. You got lucky." Naruto looked offended. "This is going to hurt, but someone should say it. You shouldn't be Hokage." Now he really looked outraged. "You can be, but you shouldn't. What are you going to do if you do achieve your dream of peace, and suddenly you have bands of killers who have absolutely nothing to do? Continue to train children how to kill?" I waved my hand to an imaginary field of children training.

I continued: "Abandon it while other villages continue their training, so that, if lucky, in generations from now when a conflict starts Konoha will be weaker than them and easy pickings? What about other potential conflicts, have you even thought about what the fire daimyo will do to military assets who refuse to be useful to him anymore? Or will you complacently go to war on his orders? On the off chance he leaves you and Konoha alone, will you just let the surrounding fire country burn? To quote our own sensei, you need to learn to look underneath, not just blindly accept what you're told."

I glanced at Kakashi as I said this, and he looked conflicted. "If you won't think of yourself, if you are really determined to be a fool just to chase an idealistic vision of reality, think of others. It probably isn't you who will end up in the most danger; you have the Kyuubi, after all. In fact, I can tell you that if you tell anyone about this conversation, I'll have people out to assassinate me, if I don't already."

"Good god, you're as bad as Orochimaru. Enemies in Konoha? You're paranoid and delusional!" Jiraiya gasped.

I looked at Tenzo, who had been quiet, simply waiting to provide support. "One word. Root."

Tenzo nodded at me in agreement. Everyone looked at him like he was a traitor.

"But Orochimaru is different! He's out to steal your body! He steals a new one every three years!" Sakura blurted.

"I know," I said bluntly, to their shock.

"And you're_ okay_ with that?"

"I am. I fixed it so he doesn't need to steal a human life anymore, but trusting him, he'll be a dumb-ass about it and go after me anyway," I sighed like I thought everyone but me was a fool. Which was partially true. I thought Tenzo was okay.

"You're disturbingly like my old partner in far too many ways," observed Jiraiya. "As such, I can't trust a word you say to be anything but manipulative. Don't trust this snake, Naruto."

"Ah... Sasuke's just confused." Naruto tried to come to an explanation that would fit his idealism, and I resisted the urge to slap myself in the head. "Maybe there are a few bad apples somewhere in Konoha, like the people who called me a demon, but they aren't all bad! Certainly much better than a guy who wants to kill you and steal your body! I'm certainly not going to leave Konoha!"

"I wasn't suggesting you should. That would be stupid for you, actually," I told him bluntly, just getting him more confused.

"Well... if it's not so bad, you should come back!"

I thought he'd be like that. "Think about it. Look for enemies. Don't forget to watch your back. I can't be looking after you forever." I took steps back. "I think it's time to part ways. I have things to do. Goodbye again, Naruto."

"No!" he shouted, launching himself at me.

I flash-stepped away, and summoned a giant snake.

.

.

Orochimaru was very sick, and I stood next him at his bedside, thinking quietly. He looked surprisingly vulnerable. It was getting time to switch. Stronger and stronger medicines weren't doing it for him. Would he go after me? Everyone said he would. Even in my head, I thought so. Yet, I still did not strike first, despite not feeling suicidal today. In fact I felt happier than I'd felt in ages.

"Neko. Do you remember when I said my goal was to learn the underlying principles of jutsu?"

"Yes," I nodded firmly, wondering how I could ever forget.

"My goal isn't just that. It's to learn the meaning of existence."

I looked sympathetically at him. "You won't learn that by playing God, Orochimaru. It's funny, but I wanted to learn that too once. What did you want the answer to be? That you meant something?"

He was quiet. Perhaps he didn't want to reveal something so vulnerable. But then he had been extremely quiet today. "...yes."

"I stopped wondering when I figured it out," I told him, quietly taking my hand in his and giving it a squeeze, though he'd probably forget all about my sympathy later. I suppose it was more for my own satisfaction than his, then.

He stared at me with a degree of despair and wistfulness. Not being slow to put the dots together, there was a flicker of horror there too. "You killed yourself."

"You are familiar with how our brains are responsible for our feelings, our instincts, and that they are all wired for survival? That any trait that does not get passed on to the next generation is lost forever?"

He nodded, giving me a look that said 'do not toy with me, get to the point'.

"Then why do you think you desire meaning? What do you think the purpose, the meaning you crave so deeply for is? We are hard wired by our brains to interpret everything, to look for symbols and meaning out of the sounds hurling out of our mouth, and by that wiring, to look for hidden meaning in things that aren't even sounds. It's how we learn language, it's how we read and write, it's how we communicate and think. But not everything in life is a word. Eventually, something just has to stand for itself. Something has to stand underneath it all. Look underneath the underneath. That's existence." I'm pretty sure Kakashi never quite meant his catch-phrase to be used quite that way, but it suited my purposes just fine. I carefully thought for a moment. "We are also wired to have feelings, wants, desires, in particular, for food, for shelter and safety, for knowledge and novelty," he seemed to be accepting this so far, although his face was not exactly expressive and seemed carefully blank so who knew what he was feeling, "to be needed by our community, to be admired and cherished, to have a community, to communicate, _and to have a meaning and purpose in that community_." I didn't think he was going to like this. "That is what you desire. That is your humanity's screaming for meaning." _You are lonely and miserable, despite the fact you have numbed yourself to human interaction and do not get much of anything out of it anymore. You struggle to see people as people and so you cannot even see yourself._

His look gained a twitch of ugliness, not liking this. "I have no humanity." _A scared denial._

I continued calmly, "A conflict with your own dreams and self expression, your needs, and your community. When people can't find all their needs in their community, which is often because humans are by nature seeking creatures, and because communities are often toxic and damaging to the very individuals within them, or simply because the world is dangerous and no community perfectly safe, they often try to look elsewhere. That is why people become more religious when things are unsafe and conditions are miserable. But people also look when nothing is wrong at all, because we need to communicate, and that means always trying to assign an intent to everything and seeing faces in random shapes and nooks of trees and in the clouds themselves."

"So, you're saying there is no meaning," he spat angrily.

"Not exactly. We stand for what we want to stand for, because unlike the rock and the soil and the random face in a tree, we do have intent. We do talk. We do create meanings." Sighing and squeezing his hand, I finally admitted something to myself. "And you mean something to me." Even if I was not quite sure of the word to label it. But not everything needs labels. It was fine going unsaid.

"No! I won't hear it!" he started to shriek, like a child throwing a fit, and flung his arm away from my grip. "I will great, I will mean something, all on my own!" His neck and body started to distort, elongating, gaining scales.

Orochimaru showed me his true form, and I was deeply disappointed in him. I hadn't expected much else, but it was still grotesque to see just how ugly his true face was. A white snake, really?

He thought I was going to slash at him or stab him. In reality, I was going to tie his obnoxious petty self into knots and sit on him until he behaved himself. Which might be never.

"What stupidity compelled you to this charming and brilliant idea?" I scowled at him.

"Not stupidity, Sssasuke. I desire your power, your body. I am immortal and it will be mine!" He sprang himself at me.

I punched him in the face, he flicked his tongue around my arm – absolutely disgusting – and without regret I stabbed it. "You have some serious consent issues," I told him an understatement.

He hissed at me, lurching back.

"And you're calling me Sasuke, I notice. No Neko-kun anymore?" Oddly, I didn't feel hurt. I was used to being the most calm and stable person in the room, to having an adult twice my age come crying to me and come for comfort. To having to take care of everyone, and struggle to find the energy to care for myself in the mean time. So it didn't take much for me to view adults as being just like over grown children, even when they imposed unfair and arbitrary rules (_and then broke said rules, tripped over them, and I had to take care of them, again_). His tantrum didn't hurt, just exasperate, because like always, I swear, I understood it better than the tantrum thrower did. Emotional self reflection clearly was not Orochimaru's strong suit, and I understood that too.

It helped I wasn't a twelve year old anymore, thank goodness. I think if I was, I'd have been feeling quite hurt in spite of knowing better. And I would have been scared and angry toward the big, scary person. But I wasn't small, he wasn't so big, nor scary anymore. I wrestled with him.

Eventually, he gave a bit, panting. He was ill, as well as incredibly upset, and honestly, in such a condition this was not entirely a fair fight.

Then he started crying, shifting back into a frail human form, and it was just awkward, as I felt like I'd unintentionally humiliated him. Of course, there was nothing wrong with tears, but our culture shamed them. Real ninja don't cry, don't show emotion, don't let anything distract from the mission, you know. And I couldn't help but remember the few times I'd burst into tears, how I had hated my lack of control, and more how I had hated everyone staring weirdly at me, and sometimes the even nastier feeling that someone was delighting in my pain. So I schooled my expression like nothing had even happened, like there was nothing at all weird or awkward, because, hey, it wasn't weird, not really, just human. And I gave him a small, reassuring smile, though he was not looking at me, and cautiously put my hand on his back reassuringly, knowing the touch could just as easily freak him out worse.

Then I wrapped him into a hug, and couldn't help but give wide but shaky and disbelieving grin, because I felt a strange relief and joy. A part of me was tense and just waiting for it all to explode again, for him to turn and try to stab me, but, I think he was in worse shock than I was. Still, he could relapse at any moment.

To my surprise, he didn't fight anymore.

Kabuto walked in to the door way and froze in surprise with a platter in his hands, looking over the damaged room, and at me holding a much quieter but still distraught looking Orochimaru. "What did you do to him?" his voice was freezing, frigid with anger. I think it was only the medicine he was carrying that stopped him from attacking me then and there.

"Nothing. He attacked me. We talked. I told him the meaning of existence. Little things like that."

Kabuto didn't smile over my joke, one hand out and ready to attack, the other holding the platter, his stance very protective. "Are you a God, Neko-san?" The question some idiots say you should always say yes to, which works real well up until they test if you bleed.

"I don't think so. You did hear that I died and came back, yes? I can see how that might draw such a conclusion. Perhaps I became the Buddha by accident." I hummed. "I hate saying things twice, but it is very simple. Everything we feel and desire, we evolved. We are wired to see meaning in things, to make everything a symbol. But not everything can be a symbol for something else. Underneath the underneath, there must be just reality. And that reality is, we were built to be social, seeking creatures with purpose within their social group; not necessarily to be a lackey, but to have a purpose that meshes with our self. To be used merely as a tool like the shinobi do, to have our basic other needs not met by our community's purpose for us, can leave us feeling meaningless and searching for something more. Because we are limited to what our brains evolved for, this_ is_ the only meaning that actually matters, because something more esoteric, like our meaning being to eventually make a certain number of humans in a certain pattern, would make no sense to our evolved sense of meaning, even if some god came out of the sky and said our meaning was to match ten thousand and nothing more or less. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I believe so," he adjusted his glasses, instead of going for a weapon, so I believe he was feeling calmer, or perhaps reassuring himself through a familiar tic by doing an action he associated with greater control, by controlling his field of vision. "He needs to transfer now. I take it you refused."

"Yes. Sorry, but he was awfully rude about it." Serious consent issues. Very serious. "I'll get the clone." I began to rise.

"No," Orochimaru spoke weakly, suddenly gripping me tightly. I sat back down.

"I'll get it," Kabuto said in a business-like manner, turning to dart down the hall with quick, long strides.

"I think I will just let myself die," he said, shocking me. It was completely unlike him. "I've lived past my time. I'm old. I'm weak. I stand for nothing. Just a fool chasing his shadow." He sounded firm, but I doubted he was truly so calm, sane and rational as he tried to appear. The despair there belied that.

I looked him in the eye. "None of that. Kabuto and I both want you to live. You've been given a second chance. Given mercy. What of your dream to learn the hidden principles of jutsu?"

"You have a better chance of that then I do," he coughed. He was not entirely wrong, I had to admit, even if I didn't think I was going to manage it either. It seemed like a lot of magic sometimes; it's hard to remind yourself that if something breaks the laws of physics, then that's also part of the laws of physics, and the physics you knew just happened to be an incomplete model of the universe. I was on the verge of concluding we were characters in a story several times before veering away (it would make a great deal of rational sense), because that line of thinking was absurd.

"Even better if I had help. You really going to leave me with a bunch of idiots to talk to? They won't understand if I say it to them," I scolded him teasingly, trying to fluff up his self esteem. "What use is language, art and meaning if there is no one around to understand it? None. It doesn't exist. Stay. Don't give in to sappy unthinking morals about how we all have our time to die now. Not until you can at least give a rational, well thought out argument for it."

"Neko-kun," he said, sounding like his typical old self, and looking more like himself too, that calculating expression in his eyes again. "You are so very exasperating."

Kabuto brought in the experimental clone of Orochimaru. I had been fairly surprised when, in my attempts, I discovered Kabuto had already been starting research on cloning on his own; it certainly made things much quicker It didn't have a mind and had always been completely unconscious, so, overwriting said non-mind was completely harmless. Unless you are part of that rare crowd that says brain dead fetuses or human vegetables are more important than thinking and fully aware human life. That's a crowd.

"I try," I said with amusement.

Kabuto seemed a bit lost himself, these recent events making him frown deeply into thought.

"Neko, I want to apologize," Orochimaru said unexpectedly. "I felt so helpless when I thought you were trying to destroy my dream, that maybe everything I had done had been for naught. I felt so helpless when I realized I could not defeat you. I thought I was going to die. I would not have shown you mercy in the same circumstance. I didn't show you mercy."

"It's okay," I rebuffed him. "None needed, this time. You are only human." Perhaps I was too forgiving. It mattered not.

Immortality, or psuedo-immortality as this method might be called didn't make you immune to all harm, had many complications, and ethical considerations like how did you decide who got to live longer and who didn't if it was a limited resource. But it wasn't inherently immoral to simply live a bit longer. And I was selfish, and human, and I wanted him to live for awhile.

_I_ wanted to live, a good, full life for awhile. No matter how difficult that might end up being. We could face those challenges together.

**END.**

So, that's it. That is Zombie Cat Science, in totality. For now, at least. Maybe one day a sequel. I tried a minimalist approach. The following is just me rambling.

It's nice to finally _finish_ a long fic, and an interesting project. It's also nice to be able to read a fic about an ace genderqueer character, those being so rare. I mass-wrote it in just a couple of days, and looking back I can see it kind of suffers for that, even if I enjoyed it personally. I've now divvied it up into something a little easier to digest than that massive 60k+ one-shot I originally posted. I'll fully admit it; it depresses me the fic didn't receive more attention, but I suppose I kind of asked for it with my irregular bored multi-chapter updates, the fact everyone knew the story was going to be finished whether they reviewed or not, and the fact that it could have just plain been written better, tighter. It meandered and had superfluous plot elements.

I struggled too over the proper rating: on one hand, I've seen worse fics rated T, on the other, it has a mention of rape and the main character actually commits suicide. Twice.

I can see this easily _mostly_ fitting into canon from here on out if you squint reaaallly hard, since Sasuke joined Orochimaru in canon anyway. They just weren't this friendly, and the Hokage didn't get to live. And I don't see Neko trying to slaughter all of Konoha, but maybe some 'curse of hate' mental influence does batty shit to your mind? I didn't ever obsessively read and watch every last bit of the manga, but I have the basic jist. I think my character just royally trashed the plot. :P Oh well.

Above all, it was the story of a depressed person finding their way in life again. Two of them.

Also, some humanistic philosophy. It's completely unique to me and entirely in my own words, but I don't think the exact belief itself that humans evolved to find meaning in their communities is itself new, since it isn't much of a leap from 'humans evolved, we have brains that are products of our evolution'. Or maybe it is new. -shrug- Well, I'm wasting it on fanfic, so enjoy.

**Moral viewpoint / who's right or wrong?:**

As to whether Naruto or Neko were correct, neither are entirely. They are both right and wrong. Neko is correct to perceive friends who want to punch him/her and brutally drag them-self back home regardless of their own wishes to be kind of abusive and threatening, Naruto is correct that letting a self destructive person like Sasuke run out to potentially get kidnapped by a murderous snake freak isn't a very good decision. Naruto is foolish not to think about the consequences of Sasuke getting dragged home as a missing-nin, but so is Neko, who didn't really think about it much either but was too apathetic to care what would happen to them-self and a little too far gone in the head to recognize the agony Neko was causing to their friends.

**Is Neko a boy or girl, gay or straight, trans or cis:**

None of those. They are genderqueer / agendered, only identifying as one gender or another mostly out of bodily comfort. They are also, at the most, demisexual, but probably just asexual because it really, really doesn't matter to the story. They still may feel the desire to have someone to love and hold just like everyone else, just not the lust. Which sucks lemons, since almost no one ever wants to be in a relationship with an ace and non-aces often find it a betrayal or creepy when a friend just wants to kiss them.

Sometimes aces will have sex anyway, for the satisfaction of their partner, but they shouldn't be pressured into it.

**On Orochimaru's character and why I wrote him this way**: As the story went on, Orochimaru changed a little by little in attitude; the key was another person like himself (but not too much like him) who could kind of speak his language, ruthless pragmatism, and yet who came to very different results with it, sometimes better results. Orochimaru might be a little OoC, if so, that's because I made him more motivated by 'hidden principles' than by 'setting pinwheels in motion', to quote his own canon stated motivations. And finally, by his other stated motivation, to find the meaning in everything, which seemed to me his ultimate motivation along with fear of death. It always sucks to me when the one character I identify with in a story is the evil one.

A part of me kind of wanted to just write 'Science loving Sasuke', but that wouldn't have quite worked I think; part of the equation was the fact the other person was immortal, something Orochimaru would be forced to respect, being one of his own goals.

It would also, and that is not something that would happen over night or even I think very much until he finally confronts his own mortality, make it safer to feel fondness for them, because grieving their death will never be an issue. He doesn't strike me as the sort who wants close bonds, feels any deep urge for them, or the like, but I think a more sane version of him would enjoy having a sane person of a similar mindset to himself to talk to, for the intellectual satisfaction and curiosity alone at least. A completely similar mindset, one just as ruthless, would be too threatening, but someone just on the edge who can understand ruthlessness intellectually but feels no need for it themselves would fit best.

Pissing off Konoha by stealing something they want would be a massive bonus, of course, and so would having an interesting object of study who is relaxed and nutty enough to volunteer for experiments.

I also don't think, despite his rage at being treated as ignorant, he actually understood emotional bonds at the start of the fic. Talking about it in detached terms with Neko, who has a better perspective yet enough detachment themselves to see things from a more antisocial emotionless point of view, would help him come to grips with it better, and easier to swallow without the indignation of moral lectures he would have received from other people trying to tell him he's 'heartless' or people who would try to cure him with punches (typical ninja _).

It might have been more realistic and likely for him to stay a completely manipulative bastard and for him to just be a psychopath.

If it truly bothers you, we can say ninja work didn't do him any favors and that this particular version would have been more normal without becoming a soldier; perfectly normal people taught to be soldiers will do atrocities when ordered, and some then come home and do the same to their own civilians given the opportunity. I could easily see a person otherwise cognitively normal being encouraged to torture and experiment on enemies and then internalizing that attitude toward their own people as a coping method. It is something that genuinely happens.

In that vein, this is also a story of Konoha's well meaning failures, as 'good guys' who think everything they do is for the best. It's hard not to have good guy status when your villains are literal cackling snake-faced bastards, but when your villains are a little more nuanced and can't be brought to heel with punches of friendship, you tend to end up not looking quite so swell, especially when torture is among your tactics.

(As an aside, summoning seems broken. What's preventing everyone from fleeing from any battle they want to flee from, again? Perhaps I missed that explanation?)

Other details:

You could kind of see me getting bored toward the end as I skipped things, but, for some of it the skipping was fully planned from the start; I didn't plan to hash out every little detail of canon when events go exactly the same, and I think many fanfic authors make the mistake of rehashing canon details and wasting entire chapters to get to the actual new material they want to write. In short, they don't write a story, they write a 'corrected' version of another story, which can get quite dull and boring... although they seem to be the most popular stories on the site sometimes, so, meh, what do I know. Nothing, apparently.

I was super-tempted to have Itachi do the rescue, and I think someone should very much make a fic about Sasuke getting jailed by Konoha and Itachi springing him free out of love and desperation if someone hasn't already. I'd love to read it! No real Itachi in this fic, but, well, let's say Neko doesn't care about him and chasing him as much anymore at the end of it, so that's a form of resolution.

A part of me has been thinking about what I 'want' from fanfic, why I sometimes search restlessly. I think I often look to fanfic for a conclusion, an analysis you wouldn't find in the original work. Most of the time, those analysis's tend to be simple: 'what if so and so had a diff team!' but I at heart desire a little bit more than that. A different view into a character's mind and what makes them tick, a deconstruction of the themes of a work and whether the goals the characters are working for are really the best things they could wish for, whether their methods would work long term... things like that. Interesting little stuff. Hence, this character driven fiction.

Ran up 120 pages in open office org and around 70,000 words, whoot, all in one month. Nearly killed myself with lack of sleep.


End file.
